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A monthly podcast in which Stuart Carlton (a native New Orleanian) asks smart people to teach him about the Great Lakes. Co-hosted by the awesome staff at Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant.
Stuart Carlton 0:00
That's what I want to do.
Dr. Mike Shriberg 0:01
That's like I hit the right answer. Yeah.
Stuart Carlton 0:05
This was totally worth it to you will be very excited. Right? It's very high quality stuff. Alright, here we go. Anyway, we'll get started teach me about the Great Lakes teach me about the Great Lakes. Welcome back to teach me about the Great Lakes a twice monthly podcast in which I A Great Lakes novice as people who are smarter and harder working than I am to teach me all about the Great Lakes. And my name is Stuart Carlton. I work with Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant and I know a lot about exactly where I fit in the grand scheme of things, but don't know a lot about the Great Lakes that's supported this year. So wait, I heard that laugh? Did you hear that laugh that was making constantly making go on how are you?
Megan Gunn 0:42
I'm good steward and coming back from break Oh rested and ready and recharged and just excited about what this new year it's going to bring? That's right.
Stuart Carlton 0:52
Me too. Happy New Year to you, Megan and Happy New Year's all you great listeners out there. Yeah, I also had a wonderful new year, which I know because it has already happened of maybe should have gone to bed a little early on New Year's Eve. Oh my God. Are you are you midnight person on New Year's Eve? I
Megan Gunn 1:10
am I try. Yeah, it doesn't always work out. But I try. I can't
Stuart Carlton 1:16
think of the last time I stayed up. For New Years. I was at a family event. That's what it was. This was probably 15 years ago. And we lived in Gulfport, Florida, which is on the south side of St. Pete. And you can cross over this big bridge into the Sarasota area called the Sunshine Skyway. And so we were at some sort of a family event. And then for family event related reasons, it became critical that we leave the family event. So we took off and we're driving right over this huge Sunshine Skyway as the fireworks everywhere we're going off to a side of us and that was the last time I saw New Year's Eve fireworks. So
Megan Gunn 1:55
that's your last memory of a New Year's Eve fireworks. That's fantastic memory to have. It
Stuart Carlton 1:59
is it is it is well other than we had to leave suddenly thing for family, you know that?
Megan Gunn 2:07
We all say no.
Stuart Carlton 2:08
Anyway, we've gotten you know, it's the new year. Everything is fresh. It's so we're just gonna meander our way around. But that's not why we're here. Is it Megan? No, no, it's never rubber here. Other. We're always here to interview somebody, including today, we got a really cool interview lined up. But the best news is, of course, we're interviewing a researcher, which you know what time it is.
Researcher which teaches about third grade. First time of the year, our guest today is Dr. Mike Shriberg Mike is a professor of practice and engagement at the school for environmental sustainability at the University of Michigan. It's also the director of engagement for the cooperative Institute for Great Lakes research, which you may know is to Ziggler. And for Michigan secret, which you may know as Michigan secret. He's also the author of I guess you might notice in Michigan Sierra College program, but you probably don't. And he's also an author of this interesting new kind of think piece or the lead author of several out in the Journal of Great Lakes research called leadership for the next generation of Great Lakes stewardship. And I think that's yeah, I think I got the title, right. Anyway, Mike, how are you today?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 3:32
I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I'm proud to call myself a researcher just so I can hear that song. Me too.
Stuart Carlton 3:38
all time classic. I mean, in a very limited definition of classic. Alright, so you have a lot of titles, man, what is it? What do you do is as all of that stuff, what is your job? Like?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 3:50
Yeah, my job is really research translation and working with students to on Great Lakes issue. So I have a whole teams of master's students here at University of Michigan School for environment and Great Lakes, or school for environmental sustainability, who are doing these series of Great Lakes masters projects. I'm helping them teaching them professional skills. And then I'm working with the institute's like you mentioned, Sigler and Michigan Sea Grant, and essentially work on getting those findings and the amazing research that's going out there, into the hands of decision makers, stakeholders, media, like you all, etcetera. So a lot of research, translation work all in service of the Great Lakes.
Megan Gunn 4:31
I think that's fantastic. There's a lot of research that's out there, where there, there are people that have they've got certain degrees and can understand it, but the rest of us, the rest of us that it can really impact me to be able to understand it so that we can also have a positive impact and make change to so thank you for all that you do.
Dr. Mike Shriberg 4:53
Yeah, well, you know, I came here from I was at the National Wildlife Federation running the Great Lakes region for the last First, who are nine years before I came into this position that just about a year ago, and you know, I did see a lot of where there was academic research that was done and just kind of tossed over the fence. And those of us on the practitioner side, weren't really sure what to do wasn't really in the usable form. So I'm really committed to making sure that the incredible work going on on the academic side can have the maximum impact.
Stuart Carlton 5:24
Our former director, Brian Miller was his name. He's the director of Illinois-Indiana Sea Grant for a long time, and he's been a great lakes, mucky muck. For a while I remember at one point, he talked to me, he's like Stuart, you know, what we need to make sure is that research is used. And I came from, like a more academic background at first. And just that idea of it being used, I thought was interesting. And you just use that term usable, which it has to be in order for it to get used. Do you think that's intention, though? I mean, or is that so you're doing this translational research? Is it hard to get scientists to change their mindset from chucking it over the fence to actually producing something that is usable?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 6:02
It depends. I mean, just just like everybody else, some of the scientists are sort of ready for that opportunity are saying, Please Help Help me, I want this, I want my work to be publicly resonant. I want, you know, I want it to have the maximum impact, and others not and I pass no judgment on others say, Hey, let me do my lab stuff, you do the work on the, I'm not interested in that. And you need people who are doing the basic science as well. But I do think there's been this kind of shift towards more applied work into more impactful work, it's being recognized more sort of, in the funding streams, it's being recognized more in universities, it's being recognized more and how folks get tenure, that reward system within University. So I feel like, you know, it's shifting that way. And part of my role is to help develop the skill sets so that researchers can can have that maximum impact, that
Megan Gunn 6:55
not everybody can be an expert in everything. So let let people be those different experts.
Stuart Carlton 7:03
First up, what are their skill? So you say you help develop the skills? What? Were so far from the list already? I apologize, Mike? What? What kind of skills? Can you help them? Because my kids, right? Not everybody's going to do this? Right? Successfully? But but maybe there are some steps that scientists can take, like, if you have, like, what are some skills that you think people can bone up on? If they want to become a better translator of research?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 7:26
Well, you know, it's some of the basic communication, right? Like, how do we get it down to the core core message. And I think that this more with sort of the grad students that I work with, one of the things that I do, is I have one of our local media personalities, Lester Graham, who's with Michigan Radio, he comes into the course he asked each of these grad students about their master's project, and has them get give it to them in a 32nd pitch, oh, cool, can make complex research down to something that he then would be able to pitch to his editor editors, and by the way, it's lit led to some actual stories. That's fantastic. But more important is the skill set. Can you do that? And so you know, doing that with folks who who have much more experience and actually are much deeper in the work, sometimes it's harder for those folks than it is for students, because they have so much knowledge, getting it down to kind of those bite sizes that are needed to be publicly resonant can be really tricky.
Stuart Carlton 8:19
Yeah. Oh, look at that. I'm in Leicester grams website now. That's cool. Man, this guy is Yeah. You'd be lucky to be interviewed by Lester. All right, well, let's let's try to pull ourselves back in again, this is all my fault, as usual. So we're here because this paper, he wrote about the next generation of Great Lakes stewardship, and he wrote it with a bunch of co authors, I think it's worth remembering that. But so what inspired you in the team to do this? Like, why? Why did you want to do this and why now?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 8:48
Well, I think we're at kind of this, this pivot point moment in, in our collective Great Lakes work. And by that I mean in one of the things that myself and the co authors who are who are different faculty members from across the University of Michigan, all in different fields and things, but with a common interest in the Great, Great Lakes. But you know, one of the things that that we've realized is, we're at this pivot point in Great Lakes Restoration initiatives. And by that, I mean that we have largely funded now the areas of concern, these are the toxic hotspots that had been the plurality of federal cleanup dollars. That's where the single biggest chunk of money is gone. With the additional billion dollars that came through the infrastructure funds. We now have a plan, at least in the budget to clean up all the hotspots that are eligible. And what it does is it actually allows us to think more broadly about restoration. It's kind of both this financial pivot point. But more importantly, I think it's actually a pivot point in our thinking that we can be thinking more forward about restoration. Moving away from remediating past harmed don't get me wrong, there's still remediation left to do in the region, but some of the major work is done and start thinking for it. So we decided to put a thought piece together about what looking forward would look like.
Stuart Carlton 10:07
So why why now? Why now? Why is this such a good opportunity? Is it because if we don't act now, we're totally hosed? Or is it? Is there something else in the air in your mind?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 10:15
Well, that's part of it. Sure. I mean, it, you know, one way to think about it is, you know, the Great Lakes are this great uniter of the region, right. The Great Lakes are great, you know, they bring people together, they're a core value of the region, survey after survey shows this, but then we have these massive disruptions. So climate change, and environmental injustice are the great disruptors in the system. Right. And so the everything that we know about the lakes from the ecology of it to the to the community side, is actually changing because of climate vulnerabilities. And because of the way communities are interacting with with water. So when we say that there's this opportunity, it means that we've got this disruptive force, and we need to capitalize on that disruption. And we need to actually start moving our institutions. For it, our institutions that manage the Great Lakes were largely developed, while some of them 100 years ago now. And they're siloed. We think about water separately than air, you know, we think about endangered species in one bucket. And we think about habitat restoration in another. And that's not going to work. When you've got these massive disruptions coming coming through, we have to think in a much more holistic manner. And we also, I think, have a political opportunity, not just the funding, but we have an EPA, that is prioritizing restoration as prioritizing justice and climate issues. And so we have this moment where our federal leadership is teed up to think about things differently in opportunity that I haven't seen in my career in the Great Lakes. I've thought
Megan Gunn 11:46
about that a lot, even over this restful break that I've had, like, we're trying to, like you said, we're trying to tackle these challenges, like they aren't interacting with each other. They are they're connected, we should treat them like they're connected. And it's, it's hard. So
Stuart Carlton 12:01
that was a good point. But then on the flip side of that is like, we heard most scientists that become disciplinary experts. Right? Yeah. And you have to because if you don't otherwise you don't have that disciplinary expertise. And so it can be hard to protect cap, I think.
Dr. Mike Shriberg 12:14
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and, you know, one of the things and actually, some of the feedback we got in this paper is about that very thing. And we're not arguing for getting rid of disciplinary expertise, we absolutely need the experts in these four, not deep in particular areas, we're not going to come up with solutions. But we need connections here, we need to actually think about managing holistically at the ecosystem scale, right, we need to think about resiliency, as a concept that transcends each individual issue, right in each integral piece. And for us on the academic side, that begins with how we train students, we can't be satisfied with training just in deep disciplinary knowledge, if we're not training in the connections between if we're not training and thinking systematically. And that's purely that we seen some obligation, I think that comes from the academic side of things and the educators things. So
Stuart Carlton 13:05
there's a step that's a good point, but I'm worried we've been talking about this for a long time. And there's been a lot of, I don't wanna say lip service, a lot of people who genuinely believe it, but but action steps are hard to come by, right. I remember my dissertation advisor, she wrote a paper, oh, my goodness, it was probably 30 years ago at this point, worrying that we're training idiot savant, in which is concentration biologists that she called it who don't know anything about the social sciences. This was, you know, back in the 90s. But like, so one thing you're talking about is training students. So there are other things we can do to make it so that it's not just, I mean, everybody agrees with this, right? How do we translate that into something actionable, though? And who are the people to do it?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 13:43
Yeah, well, I think part of part of it, too, is how we send our communities in restoration. If we take this focus on Great Lakes Restoration, one of the things that's concrete right now is the justice for the commission. And that's saying that 40% of the benefits of all federal programs, but we're talking here about Great Lakes Restoration programs, specifically, must go to underserved communities, we start operationalizing, that it actually gives you a roadmap for how there's community input, community engagement, and how there's a focus on particular communities, when we're talking about how we think about restoration, and the billions that will go into the future. That's being operationalized. Right now through a series of environmental justice screens. And the EPA has hired many folks to help with their environmental justice outreach and other pieces, pieces like that. So that's kind of one of the ways that it's translating and operationalizing kind of changing our focal point. And by the way, that's not issue specific. That's actually specific to particular communities across the range of issues. By no means do I want to portray that that's going perfectly so it's not EPA is is poorly trained in this if you think about who we've hired for, for in our federal government, I mean, no offense to that Employees hear but it tends to be technical experts, not community engagement experts, it takes a whole different level of expertise. More folks like like you often see grants and things are actually really good at that engagement. But that's not generally who we have doling out the federal funds. So it takes those kinds of systems changes that we're just seeing getting underway right now,
Stuart Carlton 15:18
you know, what you're saying ties into something I think about a lot, though, and so I don't know if I've harped on it lately, but somebody's harp on all the time. It's like real versus fake priorities. And if something is a real priority, it needs it within an organization, it needs three things. Only three things. I'm gonna say. It needs exactly three and no fewer than three things in their mind. One is leadership attention, right. Two is it needs budget, and three, it needs agenda time. And if it doesn't have those three things, then it isn't a real priority. It's a lesson of this priority, I think. And so thinking about the justice 40 and some of the hires, we might be moving in that direction. And so that's encouraging to hear.
Dr. Mike Shriberg 15:57
Yeah, there's the old adage of, you know, show me show me your budget. And I'll tell you your priorities. Right. I mean, that's, that's true. And we're just starting to see that play out. You know, it's the Biden administration. I'm it started with some strong commitments on this, but it's taking years for it to trickle out. And we're just starting to see some of the impacts.
Stuart Carlton 16:17
Yeah, I was reviewing stuff. And we, of course, are non political as a non advocacy based organization. It's ignorant. But it's just the fact that I was looking at Noah's research budgets over the last 10 years for papers writing. And yeah, there's just a lot more now than there was under the prior administration, this just because priorities are different as possible.
Dr. Mike Shriberg 16:37
Yeah, yeah, great, you know, anything, this is on a little bit different plane. But the other thing that's been happening in the Great Lakes world that I think helps help sort of transform things, is there's a lot more focus on water security and water access, or water security and water access, meaning, you know, we're in the middle of the world's most important and largest freshwater asset, yet we have people who can't access it due to economic conditions. In You know, that's all over the reach. And then sometimes that's the very rural area sometime in urban areas. But that issue has been thought of separately before the Flint water crisis, I'll go back back to there before the Toledo water crisis and Benton Harbor water crisis there, I can go on and on, right. But now that's being seen as a central issue in Great Lakes, restoration by the NGOs, by government agencies, by by academia, et cetera. And that's another whole different way of thinking about it when the original Great Lakes Restoration claim was written over 20 years ago now, nobody was talking about water access and affordability. And now it's fairly central. You know something about climate resilience at that time, either.
Stuart Carlton 17:47
One thing that I thought was interesting is your framed your paper is a 21st century stewardship, how do we address these problems? What is it? What is the 21st century way to address the problem, both of stewardship, I guess, but also of training leaders? Well, it's
Dr. Mike Shriberg 18:03
the cross disciplinary training for sure. It's actually goes back to what it sounds like your advisor wrote about 30 years ago, for training biologists who have no capacity to work within communities, we failed, right? So we actually have to have folks that have those skills. And on the flip side, if we're training folks on the community side, who don't have basic scientific and ecological literacy, we failed, right. So it's those types of boundaries. The other point that we make in this paper, which might be a little bit, maybe counter counterintuitive, but we need to keep more expertise at the local level. So there's been kind of this trend where you know, superstars at the local level, and I'm that don't care if we're talking about government or nonprofit world or education will tend to rise up and maybe go to go to a bigger city or go to where there's more concentration of wealth and knowledge, we actually need local experts across the entire region. And we need to recognize and reward that and have that be a place where people stay for their for their careers. That's going to create this network, strengthen that network. And so a little counterintuitive in a way saying that we need more people to actually stay put in their local community. That's the kind of networks we need. Well, here's
Stuart Carlton 19:22
what's funny is so so I've just finished his paper and submitted it this morning somewhere in mind, but we're analyzing publication, trends within sea grant funded research comparing it and we're analyzing sea grant funded research, but we are comparing it to we had a little section we're compared to NOAA funded research generally. And so see grants research funding model is they you know, every sea grant program gets money from the national office, and they're supposed to take on average are supposed to take 30 to 50% of that money and use it to fund research and the local secret programs are supposed to identify priorities. There's a different ways they can do that, but probably those locally relevant research. And what we found was that the cost so for every, I don't have the exact numbers, but it's very roughly for every $50,000 of sea grant funding, you would get a publication, a scientific publication. And so that's where I really locally targeted funding working on local issues. But having an effect on the scientific or making a contribution to the scientific discussion, for the broader NOAA funding, it was about $150,000 per publication. So secret was actually way more effective. So I think I think these are not necessarily intention, I think you can make broad contributions to science while working on local issues. It's just it's a mindset shift like you're talking about.
Dr. Mike Shriberg 20:42
Absolutely. And, you know, it makes sense to me in a way, because, you know, one of the things we argue for in our paper, is that we need to train, you know, the term of artists boundary span, yeah, we'll see grant due to the very nature of how it's set up. Every people in Sea Grant are boundary spanners. So you're gonna wind up with a lot of productivity, because you're, you're kind of touching a lot of nodes all at once and bringing people together, the extension function, the research function, the education function, all of those pieces are
Stuart Carlton 21:11
we're getting to rah, rah Sea Grant. So let's move on. but no cigar. It's awesome. I mean, I've dedicated my whole career to Sea Grant, but, but we don't, we all know how awesome it was. But I can see you work on this too, like training stuff. So so your aquatic education associate, right, the three words title, we know all those. And but a lot of what you do is working with me. So Mike's talking about student graduate students, right, yeah, maybe some undergraduates to you work with much younger students in that, like, what are you seeing in terms of trying to train stewards? Like, what works for you? Or do you have any sort of thoughts on this based on your experience here.
Megan Gunn 21:46
So I will say that I'm still trying to work on what is actually going to be the most impactful for them. But what I have found so far is that like, once you get them connected to a space that's connected to them, then they're going to be more likely to champion for that body of water, that ecosystem, or example, we could bring students from Northwest Indiana down here to the middle of nowhere, Indiana, and teach them about a body of water here. But that's like, there's going to be fun, and they're going to enjoy nature. But if you take them to Lake Michigan and show them that this body of water is 20 minutes from where they live. And they can have like, the practices that they do and use and the litter that they may throw out the window or they've seen someone throw out the window has an impact on that value of water, then they're gonna be more likely to want to champion for change in that space.
Stuart Carlton 22:41
And so so the idea of boundary spanners maybe that arrives later, right? Although if you're training so another thing that Megan does that she doesn't call familiar faces project, right, in which she tries to expand sort of people's definition of what an environmentalist or scientist or as person can look like. And so maybe one way you get boundary spanners is by having a more diverse group of people involved in. So once you guys look at like I do, and I said, guys, right, that's, that's good. But but it needs to be more expensive for
Megan Gunn 23:16
everybody should be represented, everybody is impacted by the things that we do, right, and everybody should be represented and making that change. Such
Dr. Mike Shriberg 23:23
work developing stewardship at Epic and sense of place, right? I mean, that's kind of the pyramid upon which everything else flows from
Stuart Carlton 23:32
Yeah. Makes a lot of sense. So are you thinking about this? I think this is potentially an optimistic article. Oh, there could be pessimism too, right? If we don't do this, if we blow the generational opportunity, we might not get another one right, or might not get another one in this way. Are you? Would you call yourself an optimist or a pessimist or a pragmatist about the Great Lakes?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 23:57
Well, you know, those who know me, well will will, will certainly say I'm a serial optimist, the dose of pragmatism, okay. I'm definitely a kind of glass half full guy, overall. But, you know, in this article, we do lay out some really, you know, frightening trends on environmental injustice on the climate vulnerabilities on these emerging contaminants like P Foss, that we're seeing invasive species, which can kind of, you know, have wreaked havoc on on the Great Lakes ecosystem, and could do continue to do so. But, you know, if we don't approach these with a sense of optimism, we're not going to stay motivated for our work. And we truly believe this. I mean, remember the the systems that have survived have survived for much longer timescales than humans. And so in many ways, when we think about it's like, Alright, how are we going to get to a state of resilience? How are we going to sort of weather the storm of, of climate change and injustice didn't get to a state, that's going to be there's going to work both for the human and natural communities. And I think outlining that vision and then back casting, you know, to right now, like, I spend time with students doing that, because you got to build from a positive vision. That's what fuels all of our internal fires. And, you know, hope it's not just wild eyed optimism. It's actually, you know, rooted in sort of the practical steps to get there. But I'm a big, I'm a big fan of sort of starting with, with the bold, beautiful vision and then working backwards from there. I love
Megan Gunn 25:31
it. You can't you can't go at it with doom and gloom, you've got to talk about the happy thing is to
Dr. Mike Shriberg 25:38
make some Yeah, and I just saved from, you know, working in the advocacy sphere for the National Wildlife Federation, and I've worked for a couple of other organizations in doom and gloom doesn't there's the practical element of this to doing limb doesn't work. The social science research and social psychology of this is really clear, people turn that off really quickly. Right? Well, you can't, you actually can't function that way. And hope to move the public to whatever it is, whether it's a local restoration, or it's a policy, which you're trying to build support for. The positive vision is, is actually what people will will, you know, align behind him with gloom and doom turns in the way
Stuart Carlton 26:15
Okay, so why don't we Why don't we close with that, then let's look. So if we're beginning with the end in mind, and we're back casting to what it is, so what is the here we are, it is the end of this generation, read the generational opportunity. So let's jump forward to when this generation is winding down. We don't have to put a specific date on it, because that's just kind of creepy. But we're looking back and thinking, wow, this, we've really nailed this generational opportunity. We've made a huge difference. And we had a positive vision and we have enacted it, what sort of things have we done that makes us feel that way? Or what sort of results have we seen, that makes us feel so positively in our dotage, as we look back at the good work that we did?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 26:57
That's a great question. I mean, I think one sign is you see it in sort of the physical arrangements of communities, right communities turn their backs to the water moved away from the water, as it got more polluted over time, and we're seeing a slow return to that. And then, you know, if we, if we fast forward, and we say, communities and individuals are actually, you know, now reopened to the water, and of course, that water, think back to the clean, clean water act, it's fishable. It's drinkable, it's swimmable. And then people are utilizing in all of those different different ways. Because we've taken care of hominids, we've restored habitat, we've done all those things where communities are interacting with their water, in, in what I was gonna say new ways, but in ways that were that were common before the industrialization actually poisoned and polluted that water. So it's really return into a state hopefully, where we've got resilient waterways, where we've gotten a handle on some of the issues of the extremes that are happening now. Now, with climate, we've gotten a handle on some of the flooding and the water level rise. And that's due to climate mitigation and adaptation efforts. But I'd love to hear what how that jives with what you think as well.
Stuart Carlton 28:11
I think it makes a lot of sense. The idea of communities turning away so a lot of my research currently is into areas of concern and revitalization within those areas. And you know, what does revitalization look like and for whom does revitalization occur? Right? And so I think hearing those communities turn or turn their backs away from the face the water again, I think that makes a lot of sense. And you do hear the eatable eatable, this swimmable, drinkable, fishable hopefully not eating the water, maybe like superior. And I think that that makes a lot of sense to me and doing in a way that is more just and equitable. Right. I think that makes a lot of sense. I
Megan Gunn 28:51
love I feel the same. I feel the same
Stuart Carlton 28:55
way. Well, Mike, this is interesting. And actually, I do think I like your positive vision because it is easy to get Doom and gloomy. But we don't like to be doom and gloom here and teach me about the Great Lakes, especially late in the afternoon. It's a brand new year, as we've mentioned, because we're recording this in the new year. And, and so it's a time for optimism, and that's great. But that's not why we invited you on teach me about the Great Lakes this week. The reason that we invited you on teach me about the Great Lakes is ask you two questions. So the first one is this. If you could choose to have a great donut for breakfast, or a great sandwich for lunch, which one would you choose?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 29:29
Well, I was sitting here wondering why I was invited now. I I'm not I'm not a donut person. So that's an easy one for me a great sandwich. Although as a vegetarian, it's got to be something like attempt a Reuben or something very stereotypical for us environmentalist, but yeah, I definitely go sandwich.
Stuart Carlton 29:48
I like to attempt a Reuben. So I assume since you work with Singularity University that you're in Ann Arbor. And so I'm going to go to an arbor and I'm not going to zoom. It's where all right. We've been a zinger. I don't have time to go to Zingerman's. I need to Enter line now to eat lunch next week, where other than Zingerman's should I go to get just an amazing sandwich whether it's attempt a Reuben or something else?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 30:08
Oh, there's a Mears which is a sandwich shop almost within sight of my office. It's been here, probably as long as Zingerman's. And it's sort of your classic place it's got everything from like, you know, a falafel to a roast beef sandwich. That's my go to thing and segregants is a special occasions thing a few times a year it's also a very expensive sandwich. Yeah,
Stuart Carlton 30:30
or you can get like a $40 black coffee all right Amir's This is probably the wrong Amir's turns out there are multiple Amir's. Once in Peoria, I was like, you know, they're showing a lot of fried chicken for Ruben place. All right, hold on. Hold on. Let me find the right Amir's A M E. R.
Dr. Mike Shriberg 30:56
S. That's correct. All right. Let's
Stuart Carlton 30:58
check. Yep, that is not that is not a fried chicken right there. Is that like a? That's a Chicago style hot dog? Yes,
Dr. Mike Shriberg 31:07
they do. That's right. They do hot dogs there as well. Yeah, it's one of those places. It's got a board of I don't know how many it's probably at 100 Different kinds of sandwiches that you order at the counter and then they come out to you. Wow.
Megan Gunn 31:19
Do they have good like veggie hotdogs? They I too am a vegetarian sundaes. I eat fish, but um,
Dr. Mike Shriberg 31:26
so I'm sitting with you I fish somedays. And you know what, honestly, I haven't actually partaking in the hotdogs there. I'm guessing there's a big
Stuart Carlton 31:36
jam a carrot and one of these right? Yeah. All right. Well, now I know what I'm doing. Gotta go to America. And Ann Arbor. We'll put a link to that in our show notes, which you can find at teach me about the great lakes.com/ 91 The numbers nine to one because this is episode 91. Mike, which is we're getting long in the tooth. But
Megan Gunn 31:59
Megan, take it away. Yeah. Wow, we're up that way, and maybe even up that way. Um, but is there a special place in the Great Lakes that you'd like to share with our audience that we may be able to visit? And what makes this special?
Dr. Mike Shriberg 32:12
Special placement really? Well? If it's not cheating? I'll give you I'll give you two Yeah, um, one people probably won't be surprised about this one. But I gotta say Iowa National Park, and I had the opportunity last, I've been there a few times. I had the opportunity last summer to go backpack the island end to end. And I just think it was the most incredible wilderness and wildlife experience that I've that I've had in the Great Great Lakes. And it's, it's, it's an incredibly special special place. But to and I'll give this kind of the it's the unsung hero award, and there's probably many, many places like this in the Great Lakes, but just about two hours northeast of here. It's called town called Talas, Michigan, which sits right at the top of Saginaw Bay. So, you know, if you if you were looking at me, you'd see me doing my the annoying Michigan. Pointing kinda the tip of my index finger there,
Stuart Carlton 33:05
Michigan, America's high five, that's what all right, so anyway, so you're pointing at the tip. Oh,
Dr. Mike Shriberg 33:09
yeah. So tell us Michigan is basically where Saginaw Bay opens up into Lake Huron. And it's one of those towns that's a little bit forgotten in terms of you know, it's it's, it is not a glitzy resort town, like your Traverse City or places and Door County and all those kinds of things. But it's got this beautiful shoreline part of it, rocky part of it, Sandy, it's got kind of like these little cap people tend to stay in these little cabins long the water, and it's just got this feel of a up north type of place in a Great Lakes place with a lot of history. It's kind of where like the auto workers had if they were lucky enough, and in the times when things were really good in the in the auto industry, lots of UAW workers had their second homes in these areas. So it's a very cool area. I have a friend who have own one of these little groups of cabins there and I've taken them spending a week or two there each summer. That's special. Oh,
Stuart Carlton 34:05
that's amazing. Oh, yeah. So it's right at like the second knuckle on the index finger of Michigan. Exactly. Looking at that now. Fantastic. Well, great. Mike triberg, Professor of Practice and engagement at the school for environmental sustainability at the University of Michigan, the director of engagement for the cooperative Institute for Great Lakes research and the Michigan secret college program, home of a dear friend of the show, Geneva langeland, among many others. Thank you so much for coming on and teaching us all about the Great Lakes.
Dr. Mike Shriberg 34:35
Thank you very much. Pleasure to talk with you both and Happy New Year.
Stuart Carlton 35:00
Oh, oh, I love a nice optimistic vision, man.
Megan Gunn 35:04
It gives me hope. Like, there's so many things that are going wrong in the world right now, you know, but but there are people that really care, right? They want to make a difference. And he's training the future to also really want to make a difference. Yep. And make a difference.
Stuart Carlton 35:21
It's true. You just hope that when you're when one is feeling optimistic, you hope that the training outruns the yes, that things are being trained for? I don't have a pithy statement. But yeah, no, it's great. It's great. I mean, they're dead on the you know, it's kind of like the last episode I did with the trainer will assess reporting the science plan, and all that is good. Secret is getting it implemented right and getting timely. And so, but it's it is really bullying, to hear that stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Cool. All right. Well, do you have a theme for the new year. And
Megan Gunn 35:54
it's really focused on what our plan is for the year what we want to get done. And so I think I'm going to take a page out of that book and work on that soon so that I can figure out what the heck my theme is going to be.
Stuart Carlton 36:06
Yeah, I was trying to think about that, too. And lately, I've been working like a quarterly basis really trying to think about what each quarter is going to look. And yeah, different roles in my life, too. Right? We I was thinking about annual planning is weird, right? I'm not saying it's unimportant, or it's dumb, but it's kind of dumb. Because when you do an annual plan, like what happens is you do the annual planning like alright, and you put in the chart, you never look at it again. Yeah, the quarter quarter seems like a better increment. And so it's like we're working on that. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, all you can do is try to move forward in the little mouse wheel or answer Yes.
Megan Gunn 36:37
Cool in the grand scheme of things doesn't really make a difference. But we can only do what we can do right now. Optimism I know I get this is this is me every day used to going back and forth. Gone
Stuart Carlton 36:51
L for low optimism. Well, that's fine.
Megan Gunn 37:00
You can also be L for Lake lover. I guess it had to be to Ellis lover.
Stuart Carlton 37:04
No, it wouldn't have to be it could be one word like lover. Lover.
Megan Gunn 37:07
Lover. Yeah. Look lover. Yes. takes me about the time to encourage you to do it. I see that. And I am Sea Grant on Facebook, Twitter and other social media.
Stuart Carlton 37:29
Or senior producers Carolyn Foley teach me good lakes is produced by hope charters. Megan look lover or associate producer or fixer and our producer. Super fun podcast, which features a moose from way back to. Anyway, this show is still reluctantly handed to me only find someone else to replace the replacement.
Megan Gunn 38:02
You have a question or comment about the show, please email to teach me about Great Lakes gmail.com or leave a message on our hotline at 765496 iisd. And for those of you without t nine is 4474.
Stuart Carlton 38:19
Hotline is is to people. I know we have a sizable audience but you need a very big audience before before you can really start to get on. But this is what I want this year. We need some some people out there calling a hotline. That means you have to have people make phone calls. Yeah, we should get a texter.
Megan Gunn 38:44
You can also follow our show on Twitter and he's Great Lakes. But the stewardship of that site is decidedly in 21st century at this point. Thanks for listening and keep creating those lakes.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai