Â鶹ÊÓƵ

Intro (00:04):

Trailblazers in research; innovators in technology; and those who simply have a good story: all make up the fabric that is Â鶹ÊÓƵ, where taking on the grand challenges that face our students graduates in higher education is our mission and our passion. Hosted by Â鶹ÊÓƵ President Gregory Washington, this is the Access to Excellence podcast.

President Gregory Washington (00:27):

71% of our Earth is covered by ocean formed over 3.8 billion years ago. These vast depths could hold some of the answers to our questions about the Earth's long and mysterious history, as well as offer predictions for the future of our planet. And the key might be found, in of all places, rocks. It sounds like we're in need of a geologist. Geoffrey Gilleaudeau is an associate professor in the Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences in the College of Science. He specializes in the physical and chemical characteristics of sedimentary rocks. His research focuses on the evolution of ocean atmosphere, chemistry, and its effect on biological development throughout Earth's history. Geoffrey, welcome to the show.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (01:27):

Thank you very much, president.

President Gregory Washington (01:30):

So one of your areas of study is, and I don't wanna screw this up, <laugh>, the Proterozoic.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (01:38):

Yeah. Proterozoic, right.

President Gregory Washington (01:39):

The Proterozoic world AKA, the geological age in which the earliest forms of complex right. Life began to take shape. So what criteria do scientists use to define complex life, number one, and why is it important to define it? And then we'll talk a little bit about what these complex life forms are.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (02:00):

Yeah, sure. So we think of all life on Earth as belonging to three different domains: bacteria, archaea, and eukaryotes and eukaryotes are special because that, uh, they---we're eukaryotes and, and our cells have a nucleus, that's a fundamentally more complex organization of life than exists in bacteria or exists in archaea. So eukaryotes, uh, first evolved during the Proterozoic. Bacteria, uh, we know were around way back 3 billion years or, or earlier, but eukaryotes only evolved in the Proterozoic. And then in particular when we have things like algae that are single-cell eukaryotes, but we also have multicellular eukaryotes, right? So the first really multicellular eukaryotes that seem to have, you know, more of a complex set of, uh, organization also occur toward the very end of the Proterozoic. And yeah, a big question for a long time has been, you know, why was there such a long delay between the first evolution of bacteria and then finally having something complex that we can actually see as a fossil and is made up of eukaryotes with, with a complex biological structure.

President Gregory Washington (03:09):

So non-complex life are like simple bacteria.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (03:12):

Yeah, exactly. Bacteria and what we call archaea, which are another single cell type of life.

President Gregory Washington (03:18):

Right. But at some point in time, you shift to more complex life. Right. Okay. So gimme the understanding of where those lines occur and how does it relate to what many of us would call complex life?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (03:32):

Yeah, great question. So the first time that we see evidence in the fossil record of a eukaryote, an organism that has a nucleus, is around 1.7 billion years ago, which is kind of a arbitrary number, but, um, but the, as I said, the Earth is four and a half billion years old. So that's already more than half through Earth history before we see the first eukaryote, that, uh, an organism with a nucleus. Right. And then we, we see various kinds of, sometimes multicellular, but still simple eukaryotes for the next billion years or so. And it's not until really the final 10% of our planet's history that we start to see fossils of things that we would recognize like an animal. And it's only around five or six hundred million years ago that we start to see fossils of things that we recognize as animal phyla. Right.

President Gregory Washington (04:23):

Wait, is this post dinosaur or pre--

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (04:26):

Pre dinosaur. Yeah. And if you think about dinosaurs, right? Again, it's like, are interesting to put this all in perspective, when our planet is four and a half billion years old, right? Dinosaurs were around something like a hundred million years ago up to 66 million years ago. So that's only occurring in like the last 1%, you know, of our planet's history, um, are those things that, that we sort of recognize and learn about when we're kids even, you know, the most simple thing like a jellyfish or a sponge is only really showing up in our fossil record in kind of the last 10% of our planet's history.

President Gregory Washington (05:03):

That's amazing.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (05:04):

Yeah. <laugh>.

President Gregory Washington (05:05):

So for that 90%, it was all simple life or no life.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (05:10):

Yeah. I mean, so that, that's really interesting because the oldest rocks we have on Earth that go back, uh, 3.8 billion years already have evidence for life in them. So we think that that simple life like bacteria evolved very early in our planet's history, probably more than 4 billion years ago when the Earth was very young. So life has been around the whole time, and we have evidence for, you know, ubiquitous bacteria and simple life through Earth history. But it's not that we, you know, we get something that we would recognize as an animal. That comes very late.

President Gregory Washington (05:46):

And so why did it take so long?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (05:48):

Yeah, that's been a, a question that like when I was an undergrad really motivated me. Uh, I learned about that at a paleobiology class. It really struck my interest and I've really dedicated a lot of my career to trying to understand that. One of the big things that I study is oxygen, right? One of the things that we know is that bacteria can do their metabolism based on many other chemical compounds, and they don't necessarily need oxygen, right? But we know that us, as complex life, we need to breathe. And we also know that, um, the process that we do called aerobic respiration, where we use, where we use oxygen in our metabolism, is the most energetically efficient metabolism, and it's probably required to have any type of complex life. So a lot of my research has been in looking at the levels of oxygen in the ocean and atmosphere over the course of Earth history.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (06:42):

So yeah, one idea is that oxygen levels remained quite low through most of our planet's history and only rose, uh, to sufficient levels at, at a later time. We've been investigating that and we're finding that it's not quite that simple actually. And there there are many other things about the Earth's biogeochemistry that really matter, like nutrient levels in the oceans. For example, we have evidence that things like phosphorus, which all life needs, was very, at very low levels in the oceans for much of our planet's history and other nutrients like nitrate may have been important. Another thing that's really important is actually how our planet behaves as far as the plate tectonics and its physical structure. It's actually interesting that we're learning more and more that we may not think that having mountains really matters for life. But mountains are really, really important.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (07:33):

And having active and vigorous plate tectonics, which constantly creates new mountains and exposes new rocks to weathering, putting nutrients into the ocean is really, really important. And we're actually finding that there are linkages between times of really intense plate tectonics and weathering that are linked to some of these early forms of complex life. So it's a complicated picture, but it's, uh, the Earth is sort of working in tandem. And what I'm really interested in is like kind of the biogeochemical feedbacks that, that have led us to this point. So, um, yeah, I think oxygen, it plays a big role, but also tectonics and nutrients for sure.

President Gregory Washington (08:10):

So one of your areas of study is this Toarcian Oceanic Anoxic Event, or T-OAE. Okay. Explain what the T-OAE, is that how it's pronounced:T dash O A E or

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (08:27):

Is it Yeah, the, the TOAE exactly. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (08:30):

The TOEA.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (08:30):

<affirmative>. Okay. Yeah. I mean, this is now moving forward a little bit in our Earth, in our planet's history, actually to the time that you mentioned of the dinosaurs around 180 million years ago or so. And during this time, something happened where we already had a lot of oxygen in the oceans and atmosphere at that time, complex life was really vibrant on Earth, but there was a short term event where we had something called a large igneous province. And basically what that means is that volcanoes kind of went crazy for a little while, and we had, uh, a lot of input of volcanoes, a lot of volcanic eruptions, uh, over a relatively short amount of time. And what that did is it put a lot of carbon into the atmosphere. It put a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, and it caused a cascade of effects where what that did was enhance the weather and hydrological cycle, which then ultimately led to warmer conditions, more rainfall, which then led to intense weathering of the rocks on, on land, which then led to a lot of nutrients going into the ocean.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (09:32):

And when that happens, it can have a detrimental effect on the oceans, where basically those nutrients cause like harmful algal blooms and algae will, will produce, you know, lots of organic matter. And when that sinks down, it uses up the oxygen choke. So what.

President Gregory Washington (09:47):

It chokes out, chokes everything out.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (09:48):

It chokes the---everything out, yeah. And basically what happened at that time is what, what you said it caused an oceanic anoxic event or a loss of oxygen from the oceans. Um, and this was something that caused, you know, a, a relatively minor extinction of life in the oceans at this time. So this is really, really important because, um, this provides us as a potential analog for what's potentially happening now with global warming. Um, we, we have a very clear signal from the geological record that times when lots of carbon is put out into the atmosphere relatively rapidly, that can have very detrimental effects on the oceans.

President Gregory Washington (10:28):

This is actually quite fascinating. So you're basically studying the history of the early formation of Earth?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (10:37):

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

President Gregory Washington (10:38):

I mean, I, I, I think that's one good way to kind of look at it. And, and in learning that history of how it formed, you also run into an understanding of the kinds of things that could cause it to decay.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (10:54):

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, I think one of the things that's so, uh, important is that, you know, as I said, the Earth is four and a half billion years old, but humans have been around a very short amount of time, right, um, in respect to our planet's history. And we've only been keeping records, you know, detailed records for a very short amount of time, maybe 150 years or something like that. So, you know, we don't really have a, a great understanding based on direct observations of basic things about how our planet works on longer timescales. We haven't been around to see it, so we need to look at the record of the past to have a really, a fundamental understanding of like, how has the Earth responded to climate change in the past? You know, what's going to happen in the future? Because, because we need to look to the past to, to get that information that's gonna make a basic prediction about what the next century is gonna look like.

President Gregory Washington (11:45):

Well, and this is a hypothetical, there was a time when the planet was a much less hospitable place.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (11:51):

Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (11:52):

Right?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (11:53):

Absolutely.

President Gregory Washington (11:53):

And you can reach back into that time and have an idea of what the conditions were like, what the conditions of the oceans were like, what the conditions of the atmosphere was like. So in your opinion, are, are we doing anything that could take us back to that less hospitable time?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (12:15):

Yeah, I mean, I think, I think we are, and I think it's pretty clear. I mean, I think that one of the things that's really important to note, um, is that the Earth has been much warmer at times in the past, um, over the course of our planet's entire history. We're actually in a relatively cold interval right now. But the thing that matters is actually the rate of change and the rate at which ecosystems can adapt to climate change. Right? So we, we have a, a clear understanding from the geological record that rapid periods of climate change have wreaked havoc on global ecosystems. And what's happening now is, you know, a, a rate of increase of carbon in the atmosphere, a rate of increase of temperature that is off the charts compared to what's happened naturally in the, in the past, right? So we're seeing, um, lots of different detrimental effects already occurring, you know, focused on ocean oxygen levels. We're already seeing a decrease.

President Gregory Washington (13:10):

I've heard about dead spots. Areas--

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (13:11):

Exactly. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (13:12):

Where there's just a lack of oxygen.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (13:14):

Right? And, and, and one of the big things that we have here locally is that's happening in the Chesapeake Bay, for example. And that's related to, you know, the same thing that volcanoes did 180 million years ago is kind of happening again today. And, and one of the other things that's happening is because of the way that humans are using the land surface, um, we're using a lot of artificial fertilizers and things like that, we're clear cutting forests, and that's causing more nutrients to run off into the oceans and causing this, these dead sites: algal blooms, dead zones. So we've got increasing levels of, of lack of oxygen in the Chesapeake Bay every summer. Uh, it's getting worse and worse.

President Gregory Washington (13:52):

You know, just from a simplistic perspective, if, you know, the algal blooms are taking away the oxygen and causing the dead zone, as you see them start to bloom, why not just go in, eradicate the bloom, right? Just get rid of it, develop systems to capture that and then go release it somewhere else or process it. Maybe there's something useful that you can pull out of that life form, right?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (14:23):

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot of very interesting and important research being done on those types of sort of what we would call geo-engineering type strategies, right? Where we would, you know, find artificial ways to cause the oceans to absorb more carbon or try and change the, the ecosystem balance of the oceans in our favor. The problem with that is that, you know, the ocean is a really, really complex thing. And we up until today don't really have a good understanding of what some of the detrimental, maybe unintended, consequences or side effects of some of those proposals would be. Right.

President Gregory Washington (14:59):

Wait, so so you're saying, okay, you go in and you destroy the algal bloom, and you get an outcome that's worse.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (15:07):

Exactly. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (15:09):

Now, some of these oceans have recovered from, uh, these dead zones, right?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (15:13):

Right.

President Gregory Washington (15:14):

And so that's, that's another thing. How do the oceans naturally recover from dead zone?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (15:20):

Yeah, I mean, what we're, what we're finding is that really it's, it's humans changing the way that we use the land. And there are other parts of the Chesapeake Bay that have really improved in recent years, and there are other areas that dead zones are getting better. And that has come about because, because people have put policies in place to, um, really limit the amount of nutrients that are running off into those areas. So they've been, you know, really success stories of positive policies that have been put into place to figuring out what the cause is, and then trying to mitigate that, that negative thing.

President Gregory Washington (15:51):

Probably about, I want to say maybe nine months ago, I took an extensive trip through the Anacostia.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (15:57):

Oh, cool.

President Gregory Washington (15:58):

And, you know, just uh, environmental excursions.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (16:02):

Yeah. Fun.

President Gregory Washington (16:03):

From what they call it. And they talked about how runoff from development and the, like, basically caused some of the similar kinds. And you get sediment that ran into the Anacostia. In Its case, you, you had that matter coming in and it added on the, the riverbed and it decreased the depth. Right.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (16:24):

Right.

President Gregory Washington (16:25):

So you could no longer get.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (16:26):

Yes, Exactly.

President Gregory Washington (16:27):

Yeah. You could no longer get big ships down in and out, right? Because basically, and I was surprised to see how shallow it had become because of all of that runoff. And they say the runoff primarily came because the vegetation that existed all around the Anacostia was removed And that provided a pathway for all of this matter to make its way into the ocean.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (16:52):

Yeah. I mean, that, that's, that's a, that's a great observation. That's exactly the type of process that we are seeing.

President Gregory Washington (16:58):

But, you know, and, and so you can dredge, right? Or you can, uh, uh Right. But when you dredge, it's a temporary fix.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (17:05):

Exactly. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (17:06):

You dredge, but if you hadn't fixed a vegetation issue. Then guess what happens over time? It just runs back in. And, and those starts to fill itself back up, right? But if you replant...

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (17:18):

Right.

President Gregory Washington (17:19):

You can slow that process. So then you dredge, then you replant, and that replanting slows that process down. And, and then they put certain wildlife, uh, I think clams or mu, I can't remember which ones that actually have the effect of cleaning the impurities out of the water.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (17:38):

Right? Yeah, absolutely.

President Gregory Washington (17:39):

And, and, and now you can actually now swim in it again.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (17:42):

Right, right, right. And things like that have been a huge success stories. Absolutely.

President Gregory Washington (17:46):

And so my philosophy is, okay, so you, you've seen some things work, right? To me, that's kind of the benefit of the work in which we do here.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (17:57):

Yeah, absolutely.

President Gregory Washington (17:58):

Right. We get an understanding, you understand the solutions, and then you say, okay, we can argue about the political ramifications of what causes this or that, or that, or we can develop pathways to fixing it. 'Cause in the end, everybody wants clean water. You know, people wanna swim in the Anacostia, you know, some folk drinking Anacostia water. You know, people want to do those kinds of things. Yeah. And in order to do that, the water has gotta be clean.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (18:29):

Yeah, I agree.

President Gregory Washington (18:29):

And, and so how do you take what you do, and the knowledge that you've been able to gain and extend it to problems like that, right. Because you're basically gaining an understanding of what causes the development of life and what can cause its erosion.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (18:49):

Yeah, definitely.

President Gregory Washington (18:50):

Right? And so somewhere in that pathway, if we're moving in the wrong direction, right, you're not moving towards development fast enough, or we're moving towards deterioration, putting in place mechanisms to thwart it and send it the other direction to me, seemed to be incredibly helpful. What do you, what are your thoughts about that?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (19:15):

No, I think that's all really, really interesting. And I think that the story about the Anacostia is really powerful because, you know, that was us being able to enact positive change, uh, through actually scientific research. Um, and actually getting clear scientific understanding of what is causing this issue in the, in the watershed. Right. And then how can we actually have sort of practical solutions, right? So I think that, you know, in my view, right, uh, in what I do thinking about things from millions of years ago, right? It's also important for us to think about the recovery of these time periods where there were, you know, negative impacts on life or extinctions or things like that. Right? What happened during the recovery that, for example, we had a major mass extinction, or the biggest mass extinction in Earth history that happened about 252 million years ago.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (20:04):

Um, also because of these volcanic eruptions, but the oceans remained toxic for millions of years afterwards. And there were a, a sort of series of feedbacks that were working to understand, to try and understand why it took so long for the ecosystems to recover. But then there are other, uh, times in Earth history, for example, like this toarcian event that I was talking about, that it seems to be a relative blip, and things sort of came back, um, more quickly, right? So trying to understand that recovery interval in the geologic past is really, really important, right. Because we have learned things like many of the things that are causing problems in the Anacostia River, the same thing happened in the oceans 252 million years ago. Right? There were these volcanic eruptions, for example, there could have been wildfires that cleared vegetation that then led to more erosion, more nutrients, more algal blooms and things like that.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (20:55):

So just knowing that that happened 252 million years ago, and knowing Right. Isolating the effect of saying, wow, the loss of vegetation at that time was really detrimental in this way, leads us exactly to what you said of saying, huh, maybe we should replant the vegetation. Right? That's like totally comes from our understanding of these past events, right? So we can look at, um, the way that the Earth has recovered in the past, what timescale it takes for the Earth to recover from carbon emissions and things like that, to understand like, what are the pathways that, that the Earth kind of needs for that type of recovery?

President Gregory Washington (21:31):

This is cool.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (21:32):

Yeah!

President Gregory Washington (21:32):

Because you're kind of leading me into this whole framework that we've been trying to put together here at Â鶹ÊÓƵ. Right? It's that Grand Challenge Initiative, right? And, and our Grand Challenge Initiative, there's a focus on research on how to build an environmentally and ecologically resilient society. Right. It's one of those challenges, right? Right. It's a challenge that recognizes that something might be amiss here. Something is going sideways here relative to how we are treating the planet and the outcomes that we're getting from nature, so to speak. And how do you make ourselves resilient to being able to slow down those negative processes or reverse them. And areas like yours and the work that you're doing is actually critical to that. I believe, I personally believe, that we are at a inflection point where we have to start developing solutions. and we have to start developing them fast. And, and my philosophy is we don't want to get to a point where one of the things I heard you say was, look, the oceans were toxic for hundreds of thousands of years. Right? Which means that it was reversible. Nature figured out a way. But we don't have a hundred thousand years <laugh>. You get what I'm saying?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (23:03):

That's exactly right. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (23:04):

And so, so, so for, from our vantage point as humans on the planet, right. Reversibility has to have a much shorter timescale. You, you, you get what I mean. And if our intervention caused it to go more rapidly negative, maybe our intervention can cause it to go back in the other direction.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (23:28):

Yes. Right. No, I absolutely agree. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I think you're getting at a great point, which is the, the timescale of it. Right. And it's as, it's exactly right in the sense that the Earth has natural systems sort of built in for keeping, you know, us a habitable planet. It's really amazing in that way. Right. But those natural systems work on the timescales of tens to hundreds of thousands of years. Right? And it's kind of like, that's not gonna be really super beneficial for us when we're trying to deal with how do we, how do we protect cities against sea level rise, right. How do we, how do we, you know, actually make our society more resilient? And I agree. I mean, I've been very proud and passionate to work at Â鶹ÊÓƵ with the Grand Challenge Initiative. And I definitely am very happy that you're pushing that.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (24:12):

'Cause it is one of the key things. And I do think that the answers here come from all of the different disciplines that are working on research and working on solutions on campus. Right? I mean, I can give us a perspective from what happened millions of years ago, right? But then we need the, the engineering school to, to come, come up with certain ideas of, you know, what are the exact interventions that we can build that will do this? Right? We need the environmental science program, we need even the economics program to under--to try and understand what's the cost of this. Right. So I feel like recognizing that there's an issue and that there's a role for science to play in coming up with the practical solutions, I think that's something that Â鶹ÊÓƵ does a really good job of.

President Gregory Washington (24:55):

Outstanding, outstanding, you know, right now we are still in our respective silos. Not too long ago, sitting in the seat in which you're sitting in now, I had a faculty member, a young faculty member, not unlike yourself, who had developed a way of using, spent coffee grounds, figured out a way to magnetize these and change their polarities, such that you can throw out large quantities of this out into the ocean where there's an oil spill, that would bind itself to oil. And then you use a, a magnet, like, framework to pull up the coffee grounds with oil attached to it. You collect them, you wash them, and then you repeat the whole process by throwing the grounds out again. Right.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (25:45):

That's fascinating.

President Gregory Washington (25:46):

And, and he had developed this process, but he's working in that context, just like you just said. He's in that engineering space. He has this cool idea, he's getting it funded, he's working. You're in a space where you actually understand oceans, <laugh>, and what things that get into the oceans can actually do to life and the water and, and how those changes manifest themselves. There is a combined solution there. That will help us down the pathway. And so the grand challenges are really about how do we catalyze that?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (26:22):

Yeah. Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (26:23):

Catalyze an environment where you all will just go somewhere and sit down and start to engage one another. Because my philosophy is with your knowledge base, you'll come up with an idea if, you know, if we try this, maybe we can solve that problem. And that's the hope. That is the thing that I believe we can bring to bear on a problem. You know, we talk a lot about diversity here at Â鶹ÊÓƵ, and it gets used in only one way. People forget that we have people here who see physical phenomena very, very differently in terms of what's happening in our, you know, there's a diversity of thought there, right. That if you take somebody who's on this side, you take someone who's on this other side here who are both looking literally at the same mass. <laugh> You're looking at the ocean, you're just looking at it from a different vantage point. I wonder if bringing those entities together somehow can create solutions that actually have the possibility of saving the planet. Or really, I mean, advancing the planet.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (27:28):

Yeah, I think that's a very inspiring perspective, because again, yeah, of course we're in the age that diversity gets a negative connotation, but I think that we are, as a university, we're, we're sort of living proof that it's not just about diversity of political, you know, ideology or, or diversity of race or ethnicity. Right. It is about diversity, of knowledge, about diversity of expertise. It's about diversity of perspective. Right. And background, and experience. Right. And, and like, that's what makes a university great, I think, is having that diversity of perspective, experience, knowledge, um, regardless of whims of politics, right. That are sort of leading us to being a unique kind of place that ideas can come together and solutions can come together. And I like, you know, again, the perspective of Right. This coffee grounds idea. Right. I mean, you would hope that that's not gonna be a controversial or politically touchy subject. Right. That seems like a very common sense solution. I think things like that are, are a way of building consensus where you can get everybody on the same page that, that don't necessarily get people riled up about certain political affiliations and things like that.

President Gregory Washington (28:39):

That's exactly right. Well, I, I believe that's a big part of academia's prospect of solutions to the, to, to the planet. We can bring that to the fold. And we can do it in ways in which other places can't.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (28:53):

Right.

President Gregory Washington (28:54):

So you clearly have a passion for talking about Earth's history and the uniqueness of our planet. So, so talk to me how you are engaging our students with that and, you know, the classroom is one thing, right. But beyond that.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (29:11):

Yeah, that's a great question. As you said, I'm very passionate about sharing kind of the wonders and incredible uniqueness of our planet with students and with the general public. You know, I bring that to the classroom. I've, I've taught many sections of introductory historical geology where I'm, you know, in front of 150 freshmen where 95% of them are computer science majors. Right. And I start by saying, regardless of where we're from, what we're studying, everything that potentially divides us, we literally all have one thing in common. We all live on planet Earth, and we are all citizens of this planet, and it will benefit us to know something about how this planet works, what maintains the habitability and, and our ability to live on this planet. Right. So I tell 'em, you know, I'm not expecting you to devote your life to this or become a geology major, but we're here for two and a half hours a week. Right. Just give me a chance to.

President Gregory Washington (30:08):

No, I hear you <laugh>

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (30:09):

Just give me a chance. Put whatever, you know, sort of preconceived notions you have aside, come here with an open mind for two and a half hours a week, and I promise you, you will learn something fascinating and you will not be disappointed. Right. That's like my sort of contract at the beginning. I'm kind of like, just, you know, you're breathing air right now. You drank water this morning. Right. Think about all of the things that allow you to have this life. They all come from our planet. Right. So just humor me. Right. Two and a half hours a week, come with an open mind, ready to learn, and--

President Gregory Washington (30:41):

Well, you should, you should tell 'em. Look, the reality is, is you both have to deal with silica.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (30:47):

Yeah.

President Gregory Washington (30:47):

For you, it's sand <laugh>,

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (30:49):

Right.

President Gregory Washington (30:49):

For them it's chips.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (30:50):

Yeah, exactly. Right. Yeah, of course. There's all those connections too, right? Yeah. And it's like, so I do, you know, I, of course, I, I do that and I'm teaching an upper level course about sort of reading sedimentary rocks and the history that they can tell us about our planet. But I'm involved in a lot of other, other outreach activities. I'm working with, uh, local high schools. Um, one of the things that I think is also pretty amazing is that in this area where we kind of live in the suburbs and in a little bit more of an urban environment in Washington, DC our everyday lives are not as connected to nature. Right. And I think there's a great benefit beyond, of course, the scientific aspect to feeling more connected with the Earth, feeling more connected to nature. A lot of what draws people to geology is spending time outside.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (31:33):

Right. And traveling to, and exploring new places. So I'm very passionate about taking students in the field. We've developed, uh, spring break field trips in our department where we've gone to Death Valley, California and Utah with 20 plus students from our department. Um, I always take students on field trips in my upper level courses. And I'm doing a series of field trips for high school outreach as well as part of some of my NSF funded projects. So I think there's like, also getting people out in nature, it, it sort of fosters that appreciation more. Um, and fosters, you know, maybe just a thought in their mind, right. Even if they're not geologists are gonna go onto that to, wow, this is something special that we should care about. That kind of thing.

President Gregory Washington (32:14):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Mm-hmm <affirmative>. So, so what's the key to communicating some pretty heavy science to students who don't have a deep background or may not even be in science at all? Not even a computer sciences. I'm talking--

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (32:25):

Absolutely.

President Gregory Washington (32:26):

--someone in humanities.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (32:27):

Right, right. Right. Yeah. I think, um, you know, one of the, one of the fascinating things...

President Gregory Washington (32:30):

Do those same arguments work?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (32:32):

You know, I think they can, and I think one of the fascinating things about geology, it's very interesting in that like, even though I've, I've dedicated my career to science, I'm also somebody that's very passionate about the humanities and passionate about art and literature and things like that. And geology is a really special science. 'cause it's very, it's kind of based on storytelling in a way, right? We kind of tell stories about the geological past, and in a way, like, our planet's history is one of the greatest stories ever told it. It's a, it's a crazy story with twists and turns, right? And like unexpected developments, right? We've got major mass extinctions and great ice ages, right. And big meteorite impacts and volcanic eruptions. And so there's that component of telling a very compelling story. I think that is very appealing to somebody from the humanities that you can get from geology that you may not get from physics or chemistry, for example. Right? So I think that I try and engage them on that perspective when we sort of get to the part of telling the story, I'm sort of like, all right, sit back and enjoy, you know, this story that I'm gonna tell you that's just, this is really compelling story. So I think there's a component of that in geology, which is appealing to everybody, right. That, that wants to listen to a good story with a lot of twists and turns, right?

President Gregory Washington (33:47):

No, it's a great story. Yeah. I hear you. So as we wrap up here, let's get philosophical for a moment.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (33:53):

Okay. <laugh>

President Gregory Washington (33:53):

I mean, really philosophical, right? So you study the origins of Earth and life on this planet.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (34:00):

Yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative>.

President Gregory Washington (34:00):

How has it affected how you think about life in general and what it all means?

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (34:05):

Yeah. I think for me that one of the things that geology gives us perspective on is time. Um, which is different, right? It was sort of like, you know, Copernicus told us that Earth is not the center of the universe and we're just one speck that's sort of circling around, right? So it kind of puts us in a perspective what geology does that with respect to time. We may have a thought that, you know, oh my God, what happened in the 1800s is so long ago, and then you put this perspective of 4.5 billion years. And it's like, it also puts us in sort of perspective of that we are only sort of a speck in time. Right? And I think that they, you know, that some people might see that as sort of diminishing the role of humans, but to me, that makes me all the more thankful to be here in this moment and be able to, you know, because you talked about how how many planets are out there that can't support complex life.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (34:58):

Right? So I feel so thankful to, to be alive in this moment where we have this incredible planet, you know, that is sustaining our life and, right, and giving us, giving us, uh, the chance to, to pursue all of the things that life has to offer. Right. So I think that geology really can give you a perspective on just how thankful we should be to be in this moment, and how many things had to have happened, right, over the millions and billions of years to reach this moment where we've got an atmosphere full of oxygen. We've got a planet full of water. We've got these beautiful landscapes that sustain us. That's pretty special that we have that and we're alive in this moment.

President Gregory Washington (35:41):

Wow. That's amazing. That <laugh> gets about as good of an outro.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (35:46):

<laugh>.

President Gregory Washington (35:46):

As I could have asked for.

Geoffrey Gilleaudeau (35:48):

Well, thank you President <laugh>. Thank you, President Washington.

President Gregory Washington (35:51):

Well, we're gonna have to leave it there. Geoffrey, thank you for joining us to talk about the mysteries and the histories of the planet we call home. I am George Â鶹ÊÓƵ President Gregory Washington, and thank you for listening. And tune in next time for more conversations that show why we are All Together Different.

Outro (36:15):

If you like what you heard on this podcast, go to podcast.gmu.edu for more of Gregory Washington's conversations with the thought leaders, experts, and educators who take on the grand challenges facing our students graduates, and higher education. That's podcast.gmu.edu.