If I really want to understand bears, then I need to understand all the things around bears

so I can understand bears better. And maybe the way you get fisheries people to play with you is

you go, in order to understand fisheries better, you need to understand bears. But then there's

the next level that comes past that, and that's what synthesis is really about going,

what things do we understand that are not really about bears and fish, that happen when we

understand something about both bears and fish? And that's where synthesis comes in.

And it's that next generation of interdisciplinary thought that isn't just realizing

that my field can benefit from your field, but starts becoming truly transdisciplinary and

starts going, what is our field, even if we have individual subfields or individual

entire disciplines that are ours? What happens when we put those together and think of that,

not as a mutual benefit to isolated things, but as this one unified thing?

Are we yes? Where are we here? Why are we here not entirely clear? We are misfits

grossed into existence by random chance with no hints at all, as to how we're supposed to make

sense of it all. It's immensely bizarre. Here we are.

Hello everybody and welcome to the here we are podcast. I am back at the University of Tennessee

in Knoxville on the beautiful campus here listening to a very loud bird signaling.

Sounds like a horny male up there. Maybe a territorial situation. Anyway, lovely ambient sounds,

beautiful scenery, and I'm getting to talk in person to one of my favorite here we are,

guess who's been on the show multiple times so happy to have her back. Nina Feferman is joining me.

Thank you for having me nice to see you in person. Yes, so wonderful. We first met in person doing

stand-up science. It was 2019. I feel like it was fall 2019. I think so. You gave a great talk.

We went to dinner as well and I was just doing like three cities a week meeting two scientists

...