Stuart Carlton 0:00
Teach me about the Great Lakes. Teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes, a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice, ask people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. My name is Stuart Carlton, and this is episode 100 100 a century, 100 and for that, there's only one person I could ask to join, which is Renee miles, strategic communicator here for number 100 How are you, Renee?

Renie Miles 0:30
I'm so excited to be here. Yeah, me too. We started this

Stuart Carlton 0:35
in December of 2019 so that was Whoo, four and a half years ago. A lot has happened in four and a half years. Some of it work related, and we've learned a lot. I was going to do like a top 10 things I learned, and then I was going to do like a top five things I learned, and then I was going to maybe just mention one thing I learned. But the thing is, there's a lot going on right now, and so I did none of those things. Instead, what I decided we would do is just invite back onto the show our old friend Sarah Zack, so let's bring her on right away. Too sweet, as we say in France.

Our first guest who teach me about the Great Lakes was Sarah Zack, pollution prevention extension specialist at Illinois native Sea Grant, our 100th guest, believe it or not, 100th guest.

Sarah Zack 1:29
I can't believe it's been 100 episodes. It's crazy. I can't

Stuart Carlton 1:33
either it is, this is your third Right? Or fourth? Your 3% I don't remember. Honestly, it's third or fourth. Yeah, every 25 episodes or so, we got to get Sarah on, or it's a problem. Yeah, it's a real problem. Anyway, Hello Sarah. She is with Illinois Amanda Sea Grant and also with the University of Illinois Extension. I suppose we should give credit where do and doing a lot of groundbreaking and important work on pollution prevention, a lot of micro plastics, little bit of PFAs and marine debris, all of which we're going to talk about today. So let's start last time we had you on. We did a draft. If you remember, I don't, this is last time, but we drafted plastic free lifestyle choices you could make. And I've been thinking about this because yesterday, I was still using my wooden scrub brush on our pans, our pots and pans is a little wooden brush, no plastic handle. When I'm done, I chuck them in the fire pit, not each time. We're not that well, but when they get worn out, chuck them in the fire pit. It doesn't pay that much and and I still use them. So there are any cool plastic free stuff that you are still using since then, or have started using, as you can tell where it is nothing but police. Oh, that's rainy downtown. That's the real experience. There it is. Why is there a black helicopter out of your window? And then just ignore that. Is that the coda from Layla I hear playing? Is that the piano playing out? Anyway, so let's start there. Yeah, exactly. And

Renie Miles 3:04
I'm wearing stripes, which is where I'm going to end up, right? Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 3:08
you had a good run. Good run. We needed anyway. Sarah, so any cool plastic, non plastic items that you've been using lately, you were, you were a early mover on, on metal straws. We had metal straws, yeah,

Sarah Zack 3:21
well, my straws, I think, have been a big thing in my house, that have been adopted because both of my kids are obsessed with straws, and so we've accumulated, yeah, I don't know why, but we've accumulated a nice stockpile of metal and reusable like silicone. We have some silicone straws that they really like. They get a ton of use because we used to buy paper straws, but paper straws, I'm not crazy about paper straws. Yeah, yes, they're terrible. They are. And I just read something about plastic or I'm sorry, paper straws having PFAs in them, that the inside of them to make them more water resistant is lined with PFAs. I don't know. I guess I can't say that I've actually seen that study, but I saw a news article about

Renie Miles 4:06
it. Sometimes I wonder if there's a place on this planet that does not have

Sarah Zack 4:10
I think probably not anymore, probably not, unfortunately, yeah,

Stuart Carlton 4:14
probably not. No. That is the real problem. And then with PFAs in particular, it's like they're just so many of them. Yeah, I don't know how you tackle it as a group. And there's so many metal straws, the way to go. I do

Sarah Zack 4:24
know I have a little brush. So the silicone straws we have actually have a bend in them, which is, I think, why the kids like them so much, because they're like, you know, bendy straws, basically. And so we have a little brush for them, but really we just don't worry about it, and we just throw them in the dishwasher, and I look in them every once in a while to make sure they're not gross. And if they're gross, then I give a little scrub, and otherwise I just throw them in the dishwasher. You notice when the flow, yes, yes, yes, the taste is a little bit off. When the mold hits, really it's because my kids eat, drink a lot. We all drink a lot of smoothies, and. And we put chia seeds in the smoothies, and the chia seeds get stuck in the straws, and they gum up the works. Oh, yeah, but they

Stuart Carlton 5:07
also scrub it out, like once you get your air compressor, right, fantastic. Gotta love a good chia seed. All right. Good. Yeah. Topic one on my list, really, are there any, really do use any non plastic things that you're a particular fan of? I have

Renie Miles 5:26
to think about it. I definitely like will refuse to use, like plastic sponges in the kitchen and, you know, things like that. I have, I have a brush. It's probably plastic, but nonetheless, you know, it'll last much longer than any sponge might. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 5:46
but Sarah, what the problem with this, though, is, like, I mean, I like using that stuff, but it's, I always think I'm really just signaling as much as I'm making a difference, right? Because, I mean, the amount of scrub brushes I will use in my whole life, or the amount of straws you would use in your whole life, is like, less than, I don't know, like a panel on my car in terms of the total amount of plastic,

Renie Miles 6:04
that's something to make yourself feel good, which is,

Sarah Zack 6:07
yeah, I don't think we're just wrong with that, but yeah, I think you bring up a good point. And I think this is maybe within the past year, two years, we've been seeing this more and more where, like, everybody was really gung ho about making switches and in their like home lives, and you saw straws coming out and reusable containers, and people were switching to glass. But just within the past couple of years, you've seen a lot more of the how much of a difference Am I making popping up when we hear about these huge polluters, right? It's like, I don't know they're I and I think it's really valid. I think, Well, I think both are valid, because it's important, I think, to feel like you're helping and to make those changes, because the more people make these changes, the more of an effect they're going to have. But I do think that on a much larger scale, we need to see some major changes happening, otherwise, none of this is going to get solved.

Renie Miles 7:04
Yeah. So, so with that and having you know, and how plastic is, like, you know, like invading more and more places in our life, it's like everywhere, virtually. So how? What are some ways to address it on a larger scale, either like, you know, using less or proper disposal, or even that just, I mean, it's just, it is. I think

Sarah Zack 7:28
that if you look at the like ocean cleanups and things like that, you see that the biggest plastic producers are beverage companies. So I think that they shoulder a lot of the responsibility for cutting down on what, you know, plastics are in these things. I mean, we all used to drink pop out of glass bottles. You know, we all had, and some states still have glass bottles. I can remember growing up, we would go visit my grandparents in Iowa. We would stop at the gas station. We would get a case of Pepsi and bottles because it tasted better, and everybody loved it and and so, you know, maybe we'll see a shift back to something like that soon. But I think really, until someone starts holding these, these producers accountable, we're not going to see big shifts. And there are other ways you

Stuart Carlton 8:14
can do it, though. And what you think about with the oceans, they're doing some automated cleanups or some, you know, they're trying to figure out ways to because in the ocean, they have the big, oh, what do they call it? But, like garment like, garbage, yeah, the garbage, trash file, right? Yeah, yeah. And do we see that? I'm

Sarah Zack 8:27
aware of, no. The the especially micro plastics in the Great Lakes, kind of cycles throughout the Great Lakes. There's movement with the way that, yeah, it's there's been some interesting studies that have come out that have shown sort of like, how the plastic accumulates in certain areas and and how it moves, and it moves on the surface, but then it also, then, as it sort of gets colonized by bacteria and microbes and algae and things like that, it gets heavier, and then it starts to sink, and then it ends up on the sediment. So you could put a piece of you could put a little plastic pellet in the water in Chicago and find it. I'm just gonna make this up, but find it. You know, in Buffalo at some point in the sediments, because it's gotten so heavy and so weighed down so but we don't really see like those areas of big accumulation, unless you count, like harbors. Things tend to get trapped in harbors and on beaches, right? They wash up on beaches and near shore areas, but, but I'm not aware of anything sort of out in the open water where things are accumulating,

Renie Miles 9:25
intrinsically. That sounds bad, right, but, but then scientifically, do we know why we should care? Like, do we have more knowledge in the past few years about what sort of impacts plastics? Oh,

Stuart Carlton 9:40
yeah, because with plastics, last time we talked several, four and a half years ago, 100 episodes ago, right? It was still in that stage where it's like, well, we know these are kind of everywhere, but we're still trying to figure out what that means. Are we farther along with that now, as far as you know, are we still, I mean, obviously there's still research.

Sarah Zack 9:54
I mean, there's still research going on. I think when we talked last time, that may have been right around the time when can. Maryland, Foley's micro plastics paper came out, they did that meta analysis looking at plastics impacts on different groups of organisms, and found that there were certain groups that were more susceptible than others. And it made a lot of sense, because smaller organisms, I think they found, were more susceptible because plastic takes up space in their gut and things like that. I have not seen the most research that I've seen that has been, I would say, newsworthy, has been the weird places that they are finding, micro plastics. I think we're still, in many ways, in the where are the plastics stage of research. And I think that the effect comes after right? First we figure out where all the plastic is, then we figure out what impact it's going to have, and then we move on to how can we fix it, right? And I think we're seeing impact stuff, you know? But there's been no definitive like, plastics are bad and they'll kill. You thing that or plastics are killing you know? I mean, yes, you see whales and birds washing up with guts full of plastic. And you can infer from that that you know, plastic had a hand in the death of those animals. But I think we're a long ways away from anything definitive coming out. I guess it gets into

Stuart Carlton 11:15
the problem there always is human health studies, which is, it's so irreducibly complex, right? That you can maybe look at population white trends, but even, yeah, it takes time. Yeah,

Sarah Zack 11:26
and I don't know, I could be very wrong, but I don't know of any experimental human studies that are going on where they're monitoring people or, you know, it's not like they're gonna feed people plastic and watch for results, right? Then, that's not, that's not a thing that's gonna happen, but, but they are, you know, trying to find where the plastic is going. And they're finding it like in human lung tissue, they're finding it in our bloodstream. So we know that it's really pervasive in the human body. It's just to what end, yeah. And

Stuart Carlton 11:55
you also run into one of the problems with science thinking about that is, it's easy to say, well, we need to wait for proof. We need to wait maybe. But also, like, why is it necessarily innocent until proven guilty? Right? It can't be good. Like, we may not have proof, but it can't be good to have, you know, little nurdles and, yeah,

Sarah Zack 12:11
I think, in many ways, I think that's a somewhat uniquely American problem, because we put things out into the marketplace and then you have to prove that they're unsafe before they get pulled whereas in Europe, they follow the precautionary principle, and you have to prove that it's safe before it gets released. Plastics, I don't know if plastics, you know, are the same as other you know, other chemicals and things like that, but that's the line of thinking in other areas, but not in the United States.

Renie Miles 12:38
I'm stuck on you saying that that plastic is flowing through our bloodstream. I mean, we're all working to take care that our cholesterol is not too high and everything. And we might just, like, literally, you know,

Sarah Zack 12:53
die from, like, apply like plastic, like you have to go get what's it called when they have to clear out your arteries, yes, but like they're going in and clearing out little pieces of plastic. I mean, these are, like, minuscule, little, teeny, tiny pieces of nano plastic. But like, Plastic is plastic, right? So,

Stuart Carlton 13:10
yeah, yep, yeah, no, you might need an angiopla. So here's

Sarah Zack 13:16
the main picked out. There's the title for today's episode. You might need an angioplasty. There it is.

Stuart Carlton 13:23
All right. Here we go, right now, one down.

All right. So you mentioned, you mentioned um unusual places in which we're finding micro plastics. Now you start finding all kind of weird places. Obviously that means that we need Sarah's ex top five weird places that we are finding micro plastics these days. And so I'm going to go number five. We're going to do the drum roll, you're going to say it, and then we're going to do the symbol, or maybe Katie O'Reilly saying, woo, just depending. All right, so that's how we're gonna do it. So number five, honey, honey. How are they finding them in honey, baby? What?

Sarah Zack 14:11
I suspect it's from the air. The air, yeah, yeah. Wait

Stuart Carlton 14:17
a minute. Hold on. Air is on, alright? Let's, let's go back. All right. Number Holy smokes, there's this little I was unaware that there was micro plastics floating in the air. As someone who respirates, I find that to be a little bit concerning. All right. Number four, sea salt. Sea salt. So because when they dig out the sea salt, of course, there's micro plastics in the sea leaves the salt and the plastic. This sounded so fun when I thought of the idea for only two in and I'm feeling a little bit sad,

Renie Miles 14:55
I know, and I'm like a main also

Stuart Carlton 14:59
sea. Salt, like salt and rock salt. That probably means that my beef sandwich from Al's number one probably had little micro plastics in it. Yeah. No, that's fine. Nice thing is, you don't worry about the micro plastics, because something else will take the first number three,

Sarah Zack 15:18
chicken gizzards.

Stuart Carlton 15:21
Chicken gizzard. The vital gray looks information chicken gizzards. Because, I guess, what is a gizzard? I don't even know. It's an internal organ. It, like does is our little rocks are little rocks. Yes,

Sarah Zack 15:33
I think it's, it's, yes, it's where the little rocks are. And again, like, that's got to be, it's in the feed, it's in the water, it's in the air, probably three, yeah,

Stuart Carlton 15:42
yeah, and chicken. I mean, if you're giving them salt, all right. Number two,

Sarah Zack 15:49
I'll go humans, people, humans,

Stuart Carlton 15:51
people, just generally, all right, the number one place where, number one, weird place where people are now finding scientists doing top science work or finding micro plastics, is

Sarah Zack 16:06
beer. That's the weirdest place. When I talk about this stuff to folks, that's the one that really gets

Stuart Carlton 16:18
beer. Yeah, that's not fun. Yeah, because the cause of in solution, yeah, all of life's problems. Yeah, that's not so good. That is not so good. And my understanding is you also brought us little plastics factoid, is that correct? So before we go, I Yeah, it's going to be our we haven't done this segment in quite some time, so I'm thrilled to bring it back. Renee, it's time for our Great Lakes factoid. It's a great lakes factoid, a Great Lakes factoid. It's a great factoid about the Great Lakes. All right, Sarah, let's hear our Great Lakes factoid.

Sarah Zack 16:52
Okay, so you got to give me a second to kind of set the stage here. So you talked before about inhalation, right? Like as someone who respirates, it freaks you out. So that was an excellent segue into this fun fact, because this has to do with how many plastic particles on average people take in in a year, and it's a lot so people consume about 121,000 particles per year, and it's split almost 5050 between what what you eat and what you inhale. Really, inhalation can count for more. But the weirdest thing I think about this is that if you only drink bottled water, that adds another 90,000 particles per year, really, but if you drink tap water, it only adds 4000 particles per year. Look at that. So little bit pro tap, pro tap, but that's a lot of little pieces, right? Like, that's like hundreds, potentially 200,000 pieces a year. It could be what's that thing? Body worlds where they plasticized the like the people who had donated their bodies to science. Do you not remember that story Your face tells? No. So that was a big I want to say that it was like the early I really mid off. This was this

Stuart Carlton 18:23
museum exhibit. This was this exhibit was at the Museum of

Sarah Zack 18:26
Science. I was in

Stuart Carlton 18:28
the Tampa Bay area at the time, and it came. I did not see it because look very creepy. It was

Sarah Zack 18:32
very cool because it's all these bodies that are in different positions, and you can see all the muscles and everything, but they're plasticized. I did not realize. So maybe we're just doing the doing it for them, and once we donate our bodies to science, we'll already have the plastic in them, and they'll just have to skin us and put us in a museum. There it is. I mean, that's what it that's what it is. That's what body worlds was. But it was really cool. But, you know, apparently I'm that kind of person, yeah, about me. That was creepy,

Stuart Carlton 19:00
and I did not go, alright, well, let's we're turning for problems we've you've done a nice job of depressing us. Let's sort of slide towards solutions and something cool that you have going on coming up. So plastic is a lot of this is floating in the Great Lakes, like we talked about at various levels. It starts off high, maybe, and then it gets a little bit lower, kind of like I did with this episode. I was starting off all happy to see Sarah Zack, and now

Unknown Speaker 19:26
I killed it. I'm filled with

Stuart Carlton 19:27
filled with regrets. Yeah, you're involved with something called the NOAA marine debris challenge. What exactly is the marine debris challenge, and how are you involved? So

Sarah Zack 19:40
the marine debris Challenge is a grant program that NOAA is is conducting with the Biden Harris administration's investing in America agenda. So this is a lot of the the money that they're using as a part of the bipartisan infrastructure. Law that was passed recently. And so this is the second year that they've had this challenge competition, and the idea is to propose big scale, interesting, unique, you know, kind of cutting edge projects for removing marine debris of all shapes and sizes from all of our waters, right? Because Noah deals with Great Lakes, and, you know, it's called marine Great Lakes qualified because they're

Stuart Carlton 20:27
big enough, and they have senators too,

Sarah Zack 20:31
yes, yes. So we submitted a, I submitted a proposal with working with a team from Northwestern University, they are doing all of the science, and I'm working with them on the outreach portion. And the idea is to develop an AI assisted system to identify and capture nano and micro plastics. For me, the coolest part of this project is that we're looking at these different scales, right? So we're using, we're going to try and integrate, are they? Because they're way smarter, and they're engineers and scientists, and I, this is not my bag, my cup of tea. They're going to be doing this at different scales. And so they're going to be using different technologies and integrating them to try to capture these plastics at at different sizes, basically. So

Stuart Carlton 21:20
the idea is to try to try to get them out of the water, or is it to prevent the police getting in the water, get them

Sarah Zack 21:27
out of the water that we're hoping that this can be used with washing machines. We're going to work with Whirlpool to see if this can be used in developing a system or a device that can be added to washing machines for removing them before they get into the wastewater stream, and we're going to work with the Metropolitan Water Reclamation district of Chicago to get samples from across the Chicagoland area and working with them to kind of educate about microplastics and look at the real waters in this area.

Renie Miles 21:58
So would it be able to remove micro plastics from the water itself, like that?

Sarah Zack 22:04
Yeah, that's a great question. I think it remains to be seen at like, the scalability of this, I don't know what, but I will say for me, and maybe it's like I was a zoology major, so I'm into that kind of stuff. But for me, the coolest thing about this is that the largest scale is, it's bio, inspired by the hairy structures on whales, and the way that whales filter out of the out of the water, right? So that, to me, is just really, really cool. So there's, like, you know, these tiny, tiny, this tiny scale where you're using a technology that is intended to attract chemicals. And then there's another one that's sort of like a sponge that picks up, you know, larger pieces. And then you have this one that's like a filtration inspired by whales, whales,

Stuart Carlton 22:50
which is super cool, and they're gonna feed all of that into chat, G, p, t, and then it's gonna Exactly, exactly that sounds good, yep, no, but they gave us

Sarah Zack 23:00
millions of dollars to do it.

Stuart Carlton 23:03
No, but it's interesting to you. Do you know how is and you may not, this may be for the technical experts, but, like, how is AI involved? Exactly, you know, because everybody wants to involve that stuff, right? And initially

Sarah Zack 23:12
they had talked about doing like, a cell phone app that would be able to sort of identify these things so that you could, like, take pictures and use that right to, like, see what was, what was there. But that is outside my area, and in, you know, the next time we talk in, in another 40 episodes, I'm sure I'll be able to explain it very

Stuart Carlton 23:34
25 or 30 episodes. We can't go 40 episodes between Sarah, that's no good, excellent. Well, no, this is really cool. It's marine debris challenge. And so you're partnering with Whirlpool, you're partnering with smart scientists from a bunch of universities Northwestern Well, you know they're smart because they're probably at owls beef right now, while we're recording a podcast and and so it's a, what is this? A five year project,

Sarah Zack 23:57
three, it's a three year project. Got a quick results, yeah. And I think that the fact that these researchers that we're working with have all independently been working on, you know, their technologies, and now it's just time to combine them in a way that that is

Stuart Carlton 24:12
effective. So Sea Grant is a we fund research, we do a little bit of research, you know, because especially at Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant, we have a little bit larger research capacity than most sea grant programs just because of the people who are on our staff. But like, what do you see is, like, the role of people, but mostly what we do is we do science communication in a few different ways, right? Whether it's writing stories, interviewing people like Renee does, or this nonsense, like, like, I'd lead up, or it's the, you know, the sort of bread and butter of what we do is our outreach program with people like Sarah, who work to take that information and bring it to end users, bring it to the public help to facilitate that. What do you think your role is on a project like this and like what is it that someone like you has to add to all of these scientists? If that makes sense, yeah,

Sarah Zack 24:58
that makes a lot of sense. And um. One of the things about the marine debris challenge is that a stipulation is that each of these research teams has to partner with a Sea Grant Program, right? There has to be a solid outreach component to these projects, which, I think you know, to their credit, right, to Noah's credit, for putting putting that in to make sure that this research doesn't just like get done and then fall into the black hole of scientific journals and, you know, isn't applicable. So for this project in particular, I'm gonna be doing a lot of outreach to like, the wastewater industry, which is not a group that I've worked with before. So I'm really excited to talk to these folks, and I'm hoping to partner with like local organizations and things like that, to do to create virtual classes, I guess, on this to and in theory, some of these organizations offer credit, right? You can take so many of these classes a year. Get credits, and you have to take so many classes to maintain your license, things like that. Okay, sure, yep, yep. So you know, if I can partner with them to make this a CEU type course, you know, all the better. But really, I think at the end of the project, so first it's gonna be about teaching people about microplastics, why we care, what they are, where they come from. At the end of the project, I'm hoping and thinking that my role is going to be helping to facilitate explaining these technologies to the public, right because the I mean, if I can't explain it right now, and it's my job, and I'm a partner on this project, you know, how are we going to expect your average person to understand, sort of what's going on. So I'm hoping to liaise, be liaison between the research team and the public when we when we start to sort of roll this out, think

Stuart Carlton 26:48
about working directly with industry. That gets me excited, as does eventually liaison with the public, like I hear things about cell phone apps or whatever, and that could be cool, and that can be a really interesting application of technology. But a lot of projects like that tells me people aren't going to be out there photographing micro plastics and sending them into a database. Like it's just, it doesn't mean it's not a valuable outreach tool. It doesn't mean it's not worth doing, but, but I feel like that that's, that's kind of in my mind, in the same neighborhood as maybe we'll just eat our way out of the invasive species problem, yeah, you know, through Goby dogs or whatever, I feel like there's there's other steps that we should be taking kind of simultaneously. And so it's exciting to hear others should be working directly with, eventually, the public, but in between, then the middle people in the waste industry or wastewater industry, I think that's really

Sarah Zack 27:33
cool. Yeah, that was one of the parts of the project that was most exciting to me is that not only did they plan to create this technology, but they brought whirlpool in and partnered with Whirlpool to actually test it on something that consumers can get a hold of in theory, eventually, that, to me, makes this really, really practical and more of a, you know, we talk about, like science research for Research's sake, and then also, You know, how do we apply this research? And they're already thinking about how they can apply their research, which I think is really great, yeah,

Renie Miles 28:06
it sort of circles back to at least a little bit on a, you know, a larger scale, you know, which is where this problem needs to be solved. Many different directions,

Sarah Zack 28:16
but, and particularly since, yeah, we know that the fibers that are coming from washing machines and things like that, are a huge, huge portion of the plastics that are ending up in our water. I know,

Stuart Carlton 28:26
after we talked about that, I did such a deep dive on this because, because, it turns out the research is really complicated, like, you know, so if you have clothing that isn't a natural fiber, there's going to be some micro plastics in there. And for a while there was this thought that, like, well, but if you get the blends, they don't release nearly as much, you know, like a tri blend or something microplastic says pure polyester does. And so I was like, Oh, that's interesting. And then I, like, did a deep dive, and it turns out, it really just depends on so many I haven't done this in a couple years, like, so many different factors, different types of blends were better than others. And anyway, it's just a freaking nightmare. And

Sarah Zack 29:00
age of the fabric. How like, whether you have the age of the fabric, whether you have a, you know, like a front load, or what's it called, and you've got the thing in the middle

Stuart Carlton 29:09
of your watch, a thingy, machine, agitator, agitator, rotator,

Sarah Zack 29:13
yeah, you know, those are, like, all those things, impact, where these are, how these are shown, how fast?

Stuart Carlton 29:20
No, so I think looking for supply side solutions is exactly right, which is fascinating work, and I'm glad to be part of this marine and this is big money that the federal government's giving out, right? Did you what is the bottom line number across all these

Sarah Zack 29:30
projects? It was $27 million that they gave out this time, and this is the second year that they've done it. Yeah, that's a lot of money.

Stuart Carlton 29:37
Yep, good, important and valuable work. But that's actually not why we brought you here on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason we brought you on teach me about the Great Lakes is to ask you two questions. And the first one is this, and we've asked this before. But the thing is, people change. People evolve slowly. They get filled up with plastic. Their brain gets filled with plastic. It could cause their preferences to change or just. It, you know, one matures or stasis state in which their opinions never change. Which is kind of where I'm headed, and that's okay, too. That's part of the aging process. But the point is this, if you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast or a great sandwich for lunch, which one would you choose? And why

Sarah Zack 30:16
such a hard question. So the last time I was on, I think I went sandwich, yeah? And I think I'm not gonna change that this morning when I was because this is I'm gonna go sandwich, because I do enjoy a good donut, but they're over so quickly, yeah? But a sandwich you can kind of savor, and like, you know, like, you can eat a donut and, like, you know, three or four bites, and then it's gone. But yeah, and in particular, I was thinking this morning about this, and what popped into my head was, like, a really good tuna melt. Really, really good tuna melt is hard to beat. For me, fascinating.

Stuart Carlton 30:53
So you don't mind the warm, the gross, like warmness, okay,

Sarah Zack 30:58
no, but apparently you do

Stuart Carlton 31:02
All right, so y'all are both in Chicago area, right in the Greater Chicago land area, where, where can I go to get a mind changingly Good tuna melt? Or is it the Zach household? Where should I go to get a good tuna melt?

Sarah Zack 31:16
No, no, go to the Zach household, because you got to go to a diner. Diner. Tuna is always the best tuna. Okay, you get it on rye bread, and if they want to give you American cheese, you say, no, no, no, give me real cheese. Because American cheese, I don't think belongs on a tuna mouth. It belongs on a cheeseburger.

Stuart Carlton 31:31
So that's those are my tips, just any old diner, all right, that sounds good. Yeah, diners

Sarah Zack 31:35
always have the best tuna for some reason. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 31:38
it's something about that the vibe, right? I think the tuna milk is a vibe sandwich.

Sarah Zack 31:43
It's like an old fashioned type thingy, right? Like, yeah, like, it's a sandwich that's been around.

Stuart Carlton 31:47
No, it's perfect. Yeah, you could put some potato chips in your tuna melt to give a little crunch. You ever do that? Yeah, I'm on hold of that. Remy, are you a tuna melt? And if so, where should I go to get

Renie Miles 32:04
a tuna melt? Actually, I love tuna mounts, but I make them for myself, and that's the only way I've actually

Stuart Carlton 32:12
go to the miles household. Come on, yeah? We'll go to reading

Renie Miles 32:17
quick enough in the broiler so that it doesn't it melts the cheese, yeah, but doesn't warm up the tuna, excellent, because it's

Stuart Carlton 32:25
open face, alright. Renee, do you want to tackle question number two, yes.

Renie Miles 32:28
So, so Sarah, do you have a favorite place in the Great Lakes that you like to go? And yeah, I do. So

Sarah Zack 32:36
I spent the better part of the last 20 years living in Rogers Park, which is the northeastern most neighborhood inside the city limits of Chicago, but's up right next to Northwestern Roger Park is a fantastic neighborhood. Rene used to live in Rogers Park, right? You know about Rogers Park? Yep. Larry Rogers Park, in my opinion, has the best beach in Chicago, really. And that is Loyola Beach, right? It's the I think it might be the biggest, I think it is the biggest, but it's just a gorgeous stretch of beach. And when I lived there, we spent a lot of time going down to the beach. The first sand my daughter ever touched was the beach there, and we used to take her down all the time, and she loved it. But they have in particular, I mean, I love being on the beach at the lake full stop, but there is a beautiful stretch of path that you have sort of at the like you hit the path and then you walk in there in the sand, so it's sort of set back from the water. The whole thing is lined with a bench. And every year they have an event where they repaint the benches so you get, like, a four foot section, and it's just a it's just a concrete sloped bench, but they divide it up, and anybody can get a section, and it's just by the end, it's just a series of artwork. Some of them are political. Some of them are in, like, memorials. Some of them are just beautiful, like, it's just this huge array of of people's art right there at the beach. And it's just, it's one of my favorite places, for sure, as long as they keep having these contests, this the Rogers Park, like the city council, or whoever goes in and they paint it white before it every year. So everybody has a fresh canvas, but they always get more requests. At least historically, always got more requests for space than they were able to give. Because people were really excited to have a little section of bench. What

Stuart Carlton 34:34
a wonderful Well, yeah, it's great. Yeah, I have to go check it out too. Just perfect. There you go. Sarah Zach, pollution prevention extension specialist, Illinois, Indiana Sea Grant and three or four uncountable number of times guests on teaching about the Great Lakes, because you are uncountably and immeasurably Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes. Glad to have been here. It

always good to talk to Sarah, especially on Episode 100 and Carolyn was a surprise guest on episode number one. You That was back when hope was the co host. And we brought Carolyn in because Sarah had mentioned that that meta analysis and that had just come out, and that's when we found out that Carolyn enjoyed doing this and we enjoyed having her on. And so since then, she's become probably our go to co host and our, oh, I forgot what her title. We have fake titles. I made up titles. I made up titles. I don't even know what they're supposed to be, but eventually she became whatever her current fake title is. It is a senior producer, wow, fancy, yes,

Renie Miles 35:49
it's, it's a, it's a great little story. Yeah,

Stuart Carlton 35:53
there it is. It's, it was a real meet cute. And here we are, all these years later. That is excellent. Well, yeah, I was trying to sum up episode 100 I don't even know if that makes any sense to do. Any sense to do. And the two things that I think are three things that I think I have really learned the overarching themes are, one is that I had no idea how new The Great Lakes are, right? You can go back to episode two, when we spoke with Michael twist about the formation of the Great Lakes. And you know, they're relatively new, just since the last ice age. So that was something interesting that I had no idea because they're so massive, you assume they've been around forever, but they haven't been around as long as people have been around in this area. So that's good. The sort of second thing is like, how just unbelievably intertwined they are with humans, right? Because we have, what is it like the Great Lakes itself? I can't remember. It would be like the third or fourth biggest economy in the world, something like that, a top 10 economy in the world, the Great Lakes region. And, you know, people have been using this since the Anishinaabe and like to today. So, you know, through areas of concern and all the way into today, like the amount that we've been using these great lakes. And as Titus says, Titus heilheimer, Dr fish from Wisconsin Sea Grant, he likes to talk about, we have the lakes that we have at this point. You know, they're not natural, they're not man made, but they are what we have. And so it's a question of, What can we do with what it is that we have? And that's sort of another big theme, I think. And then the other big theme, it hasn't come up in a while, but it's important, of the importance of the work that, like, governments are doing, and government science and monitoring so often, we haven't spoken with a scientist about this sort of stuff in a while, but, but so often, like there's all these long term data sets that are only being collected because Noah's collecting them, or because the DNR is collecting them, or something like that. And that data can become unbelievably valuable, but it only becomes valuable when you have decades of it. And so that sort of stuff is hard to fund sometimes, because it's not always exciting and immediately actionable, but it can become very important. Those are my big Great Lakes themes. Nice,

Renie Miles 37:45
yeah, yeah. I know. I know. For me, it's like, you know, for those of us grew up along the Great Lakes and work with the Great Lakes, just, you know, like all these various issues that have come to, you know, be discussed on this show, it's like it just really deepens and makes it all much more richer. All right,

teach me about the Great Lakes. Is brought to you by the fine people at Illinois, Indiana, Sea Grant, we encourage you to check out the cool stuff we do. At i Sea grant.org, and at i L, I N Sea Grant on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.

Stuart Carlton 38:26
Our senior producer is Carolyn Foley. Look at that a rocket ship from unannounced, secret guest to senior producer in a mere 100 episodes, and teach me about the Great Lakes. Is produced by Megan Lake lover gun and Renee miles. Ethan Chitty is our associate producer and fixer, and our coordinating producer is Moti ago. Our superfine podcast artwork is by Joel Davenport, and the show is edited by the incomparable Sandro Fauci. If

Renie Miles 38:54
you have a question or comment about the show, please email it to teach me about the Great lakes@gmail.com or leave a message on our hotline at 765, 496, I ISG. You can also follow the show on Twitter at Teach Great Lakes. Thanks for listening and keep grading those lakes. You

Transcribed by https://otter.ai