So welcome back. This is Andy and this is the Port Pearls Almanac.

And I'm Elliot and I'm actually really proud of you, buddy. You did it. Good intro.

I'm all grown up now. You can't find us on Spotify, iTunes, or wherever you get your podcast.

You kind of ruined it, bud.

I said can't, didn't I?

Yep.

Nice.

So what's on the docket today, bud?

Yeah, so today we're going to be talking about the diac.

There's a really long unique history of forest management that I think will be, well, really interesting to dive into.

That said, I want to preface this entire conversation with an important point, and that's the term diac itself refers to over 200 different tribes that are scattered across incredibly wide

geography on the island of Borneo. These tribes have a super wide spectrum of dialects and land

management practices that are based on the varied terrain of the island, which, by the way, is the

third largest in the world. For context, it's like roughly the size of Texas and hosts some of the oldest rainforests in the world.

It's also considered by researchers to be part of Zomia.

Okay, so Zomia sounds fictitious because I've never heard of Zomia.

So it's not really a country.

It's more like, you know, a region, I guess.

So it is pretty much fake. I knew it. So the history of Zomia really starts around 1997 when an

anthropologist Jean Mishad tries to figure out an easy way or an encapsulating way to categorize

the diverse Southeast Asian population and region,

with hundreds, if not thousands of different languages, dozens of different religions, an

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