Hello, friends, and welcome to episode 165 of Just the Zoo of Us.

This week we're talking with an entomologist who is here to zoom in on some animals you may not have thought to appreciate before, wasps.

And hear us out before you reach for this water.

From the world's smallest insect, the fairy fly, which is actually a wasp, to the infamous

giant hornet. The wasp world is full of impostors, cockroach brain surgery, pollination, and pest

control. So come along with us for a tour of all these things and more, and you just might end up with a new

favorite animal. Just the Zoo of Us presents Wasps with Johanna Schwartz. I'm very excited this week to be bringing you a friend who is actually not a completely new friend because we have virtually

met before. But this is Johanna Schwartz. Say hi, Johanna. Hi, Johanna.

Johanna, what are your pronouns? Oh, she, her. Thank you so much. I'm really excited.

So we virtually met on a stream that we both did for Nature Check, which is a really, really

cool tabletop RPG streaming channel where, you know, a bunch of scientists and like science

adjacent randos like me come together and play science-inspired role-playing games. And we played a game, I believe it was called Woodhart.

Yeah, yeah, Woodhart.

Very interesting.

Yeah.

It was a fascinating game, a nice world-building.

A lot of drawing.

Yeah, which was fun because we were all on Zoom.

But we made it work.

And you mentioned during that stream that you study wasps.

And I was like, okay.

And so then the little seed was planted in my brain of like, we need to talk wasps.

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