Oh, hey, it's your old roommate who always found the best furniture on the side of the road, Allie Ward. Did you know that you love ferns? Not yet. Sit tight. You're about to. I'm going to tell you one person who loves ferns. It's this guest. In fact, I first saw this ologist in this quick video about ferns, and they were wearing a shirt that said, I heart ferns, but the heart was a fern gametea fight.

You're going to find out everything about that later.

And they said that ferns were fern-tastic.

This is in the first five seconds of the video, and I was like, they're on.

And they wrote the 2025 book, Ferns, Lessons in Survival from the Earth's Most Adaptable Plants.

And they're an associate professor at Cornell's Boyce Thompson Institute. They got their PhD in ferns at Duke University, where they're

also a scholar in residence. And we'll talk about their stories and their history and their deep

love of ferns in a moment. But first, thank you to everyone who supports a show via patreon.com slash ologies, or you can join for a dollar a month and you can leave questions for the ologists ahead of time. Thank you to everyone out there in ologies merch via ologiesmerch.com. Thank you to everyone who leaves reviews for the show, which helps so much, such as this recent one from PT Bunch, who said that Ologies makes me happy to be alive

in an infinitely interesting world with infinitely curious ologists.

P.T., happy to have it here.

And Blue Dot Rose, happy to have you and your sister here in spirit.

Okay, thank you also to sponsors of Ologies, who for years have made it possible for us to donate to a cause or two each week.

Okay, let's jump into terrodology.

So the pater comes from the Greek word for a wing or a feather.

So like teradactal or helicopter helico, which means spiral and pater, which means wings.

So if you didn't know, yeah, the pater in helicopter is its own word in there.

It's weird.

But ferns, they look feathery.

So people who study them are officially on record as terrodologists.

And so let's illuminate the shadowy world of ferns to

hear about their long evolution. What ferns not to have in your house, icons to fern scientists,

haploid, diploid, spore packets. Do they have roots? How ferns can teach us about sexual

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