The marvel and mystery of mycelium, with Sarah Watkinson

"Even though there may be all sorts of conflicts brewing, we can still talk as human beings who are fascinated; filled with wonder and curiosity," says Emeritus Research Fellow in Fungal Biology at the University of Oxford, Sarah Watkinson, on The Web of Us. In conversation with Claire Wathen, Sarah shares how she’s built an enviable career spanning five decades as a university mycologist turned poet, what mycelial networks teach us about life, and the dry rot conversation stopper she likes to drop at every dinner party.

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction to The Web Of Us
00:18 Meet Sarah Watkinson: University Mycologist turned Poet 
01:22 Sarah's Journey and Early Influences
01:59 Diving into Dry Rot Fungi
07:54 The Fascinating World of Fungal Networks
08:48 Dry Rot Fungus in Nature and Human Structures
10:53 Collaborations and Research Innovations
13:54 The Evolution of Fungal Research
24:01 Fungi's Role in Ecosystems
26:39 Exciting Advances in Soil Imaging
27:52 Biomimicry and Bio-Inspiration
29:07 Fungal Adaptations and Hydrophobic Surfaces
29:45 Fungal Reproduction and Communication
36:53 The Intersection of Science and Poetry
51:00 Advice for Aspiring Scientists

References:
Soil Fungi and Soil Fertility, S. D. Garrett
Flavr Savr tomato, BBC
The Control of Pesticides Regulations 1986
Read Sarah’s research publications on ResearchGate
Read Sarah’s poetry, ‘Dung Beetles Navigate by Starlight’

Transcript

Introduction to The Web Of Us

Sarah Watkinson: Even though there may be all sorts of conflicts brewing, we can still talk as human beings who are fascinated filled with wonder, curiosity, 

Claire Wathen: Welcome to The Web Of Us, where we explore the visible and invisible [00:00:15] connections that shape our world. I'm your host, Claire Wathen. 

Meet Sarah Watkinson: Emeritus Research Fellow in Fungal Biology at Oxford University

Claire Wathen: Today we're stepping into the Mycelial web of Sarah Watkinson Emeritus Research Fellow in fungal biology at Oxford.

Dry rot probably isn't at the top of your must [00:00:30] learn more about list, but trust me, the only thing dry about this conversation is Sarah's quick wit. A scientist, author and publish poet Sarah's specialties span the microscopic fungi that sustained forests and rot and recycle remains. [00:00:45] She joins us to share the remarkable story of how she carved her career path across disciplines and why she loved mycelium way before it was trendy.

We delve into Sarah's groundbreaking research on dry rot fungi. Why she [00:01:00] believes Following your curiosities will never lead you astray, and how the disciplines of science and creative writing are more alike than they appear on the marvel and mystery of mycelium. Here's Sarah Watkinson.[00:01:15]

Welcome to The Web Of Us. Sarah, it's lovely to have you. 

Sarah Watkinson: Great to be here and thanks for inviting me. 

Claire Wathen: Yeah. 

Sarah's Journey and Early Influences

Claire Wathen: I first came across your work years ago. Um, the textbook that has been really seminal in the work of my [00:01:30] mycology, um, the Fungus and more recently, um, was. Here in Oxford and learned about the SPO or Science Poetry Festival.

So really eager to hear about how your journey [00:01:45] unfolded and also the spaces of both science and arts and expression that you are in today. Um, and it's such a pleasure. We're recording this live in person here in Oxford. It's 

Sarah Watkinson: lovely to see you. For real. 

Claire Wathen: Yeah. 

Diving into Dry Rot Fungi

Claire Wathen: Before [00:02:00] we dive into your background, I would love to ask a few questions to help folks get to know you a bit more.

Mm-hmm. Um, so first, where do you call home? 

Sarah Watkinson: Bladen, I'm very firmly rooted in [00:02:15] Bladen. Um, but at the same time I grew up in North Yorkshire and I always feel a strong tension towards the north, and I tend to bounce between the two places if I possibly can. Hmm. 

Claire Wathen: And help us place if people aren't familiar [00:02:30] with the area of the UK that that is in.

Sarah Watkinson: I suppose Oxford is linked by, um, the, the Great North Road to Yorkshire. And Yorkshire is where the Pennines begin. So the Pennines are the spine of Great Britain. 

Claire Wathen: Mm. [00:02:45] They 

Sarah Watkinson: run up to the Scottish border and then there are hills up there too. And um, I was lucky enough to grow up in Dale, so in Yorkshire.

There's a rather interesting, um, interaction between the rural Dales full of sheep [00:03:00] and the woolen industry, um, towards the southwest and a great deal of historic interaction between the two. And 'cause I lived in nuclear and went to school in Bradford, I was sharply aware of that borderline between the hills of sheep [00:03:15] and the mills of Bradford.

Claire Wathen: Hmm. It sounds a bit idyllic. Did you spend a lot of time in nature growing up then? 

Sarah Watkinson: Yes. I've always been nature dependent. Hmm. Ever since I was very, very small and my mother used to point things out to me. And, um, at [00:03:30] primary school I made a moss garden on a tea tray that I'd never forgotten. 

Claire Wathen: Sounds fabulous.

Um, there's many things that we'll get into in your professional bio, but I'm curious, what's something that we won't see on your [00:03:45] official research bio that tells us about who you are, what you like to do with your time, hobbies that you might have. 

Sarah Watkinson: Horses were my passport to nature as a young girl because when you're on a horse, you can go out alone and you can go out huge [00:04:00] distances and you are perfectly safe.

Nobody's going to bother you if you are on a horse. And, um, that's, those have been some of my moments of joy. Mm-hmm. 

Claire Wathen: I, I grew up in Kentucky, in the us Ooh. And so we have a quite a culture around horses and horseback riding. And, [00:04:15] uh, it's also very much part of my childhood. Oh, good. Beautiful animals taking a turn.

If you could time travel, where would you go and why? 

Sarah Watkinson: Ooh. [00:04:30] Ooh. Well, because I just happened to be reading Trollops historical novels at the moment. I think I would go back to 1820s London. Mm. And walk around a bit and see why it was really [00:04:45] such a shame to have to live in Regents Park. And so very exciting to live in, in Ebury Street or Beck Street and, and how it would be.

Um, that when it came to August, if you were anybody at all, you went to the Scottish Highlands, but how did [00:05:00] you do that? I'd love to know more about that, 

Claire Wathen: and I'm curious. If you could have a conversation with your 20-year-old self Mm. What would you want to ask or share with 20-year-old Sarah? [00:05:15]

Sarah Watkinson: Oh. Um, you won't be a total failure and nobody will let off an atom bomb, um, until the end of the century, and hopefully not beyond that.

Hmm. 

Claire Wathen: Very direct. I love it. I would [00:05:30] love to go back to, um, the beginning and ask what first drew you to fungi. Was there a moment that you connected or thought this might be the path that I'd like to go down? 

Sarah Watkinson: I thought you might ask me that and I was sort of [00:05:45] asking myself. Um. I think it goes back to when I first fell in love with chemistry and because I lived in a part of the world where the geology obviously affects the vegetation.

I was interested in conversation between the roots and the rocks, [00:06:00] um, and how the living, the living cells of the root meet the inorganic. Um, nature of the soil. So I suppose that was something I really wanted to know about. And so when I got to Cambridge, I did the natural sciences tripod that gives you [00:06:15] huge possibilities for combining odd things.

And I decided to go phlebotomy and chemistry. And that's something that I thought maybe at the time was a bit of a strange choice, but it's turned out to be a perfectly rational Oh, really? And productive thing. Uhhuh to have to have [00:06:30] kind combined those two things. Um hmm. 

Claire Wathen: And the has that field of intersection, did you see that grow or?

Sarah Watkinson: Absolutely. Absolutely. When I, when I first started research on fungi, my [00:06:45] supervisor was inspirational, but he did very, very simple experiments with jam jars and soil on the micro fungi that affect agricultural productivity in soil. And he published a book called Soil Fungi and Soil Fertility. And he was very, very [00:07:00] highly respected and couldn't been, have been a better supervisor.

And he was, um, very sympathetic to me as a woman. So most of his research students were men and they were all going to go and advise farmers. And he thought that a woman wouldn't really be [00:07:15] plausible to farmers. And so he sent me, um. A topic that he thought might be better for a woman, which was to work on the dry rot fungus of houses.

Claire Wathen: Ah, I was curious of where that came in. Okay, tell me more about that. 

Sarah Watkinson: So the dry rot fungus in houses is such a [00:07:30] conversation stopper. And at an Oxford High table, when they turned to you at the beginning of the first course, you never ask what do you research on? And you would say dry rot, and they would.

Sort of say a few polite things and then rather quickly hope for the next course on the other side. [00:07:45] But actually, it opened so many doors for me and he, ah, he set me a problem, which was, has fascinated me for my whole career. 

The Fascinating World of Fungal Networks

Sarah Watkinson: Which is, um, why should it be that when the fungus, the dry rot fungus develops [00:08:00] it first is produces just a circular mycelium like we will see on the top of the jam?

Mm-hmm. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And, but then it starts to differentiate into bits of string, apparently. And these are pipes and you can make those pipes appear by giving it [00:08:15] different amounts of nutrients. Oh, and so this is a fungus which will change its shape according to what it's eating. What could be more fascinating than that and 'cause in, in ology you can use the techniques of microbiology.

I was able to have my dry rot fungus as a [00:08:30] sterile culture and grow it on. Jelly media where I could control and experiment with the ratios of carbon and nitrogen, and it was absolutely magical. And there was a direct relationship between carbon to nitrogen ratio and the number of [00:08:45] these cords that were produced.

Mm-hmm. Well, 

Dry Rot Fungus in Nature and Human Structures

Claire Wathen: and for someone who's not, um, well versed in all of the chemical dynamics, how, where would you find dry rot and how, how does this show up in, in and around houses or, [00:09:00]

Sarah Watkinson: yes, it presents in houses. Mm-hmm. And, and people used to think this is just a peculiar fungus that grows in houses and isn't ever found anywhere in nature.

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And about in the seventies and eighties, people realized that what dry rot fungus is really is a forest fungus of mountain [00:09:15] tops in, um, in northern, in the northern hemisphere. And what's happened is that it's found a similar niche in old damp houses that have got timber components. Oh, okay. Um, and.

Using molecular phylogenetics. In recent years, [00:09:30] people have shown an absolutely fascinating global distribution of dry rot, which has arrived when ships refitted and bought new mast in foreign places which were infected with dry rot. The ship's timbers were recycled in buildings, and you can actually make, build a whole [00:09:45] story on that.

Mm-hmm. 

Claire Wathen: And so you were mapping out how these organisms were growing and how they were connected to another Yes. And the different, um, strands you mentioned. That's 

Sarah Watkinson: right. Yes. Yes. Um, and, and the need when [00:10:00] they're in the natural environment, what, what they're doing is growing on the forest floor and lumps of wood, which is their carbon source.

Mm-hmm. And they're terrifically good decomposers of wood. They've got all the enzymes that dissolve the bits of wood in a highly controlled and. Interesting way. And then when they [00:10:15] run outta carbon, they tend then to make these, extend these piping systems until they find another bit of wood and then they'll consolidate and solidify the piping systems, um, and gradually build a network mm-hmm.

Of what turns out [00:10:30] to be, um, pipes that can responsibly translocate, interestingly, um, nitrogen from place to place. Okay. So nitrogen's, the limiting mm-hmm. The limiting resource. If you find a big bit of wood, then it's worth consolidating your [00:10:45] nitrogen sources and moving them into that bit of wood mm-hmm.

So that you can make proteins and grow. Mm-hmm. So it all, it all makes a lovely story. Yes. 

Collaborations and Research Innovations

Sarah Watkinson: And I, I've been very fortunate 'cause all through my career I found interesting collaborators who've seen something new and [00:11:00] germane to their own research. Hmm. And so I was lucky enough to be able to collaborate with Mark Fricker in Oxford, and he is very interested in imaging, lifestyle imaging, and in network theory.

Mm-hmm. And he has done these beautiful pictures that show that [00:11:15] if you put out bits of wood. As though they're cities in Great Britain, the fungus will map itself onto motorways between them. Oh wow. 

Claire Wathen: Fabulous. And then what's the life cycle like? Do they, is it constantly growing and [00:11:30] passing nutrients between the different nodes?

Is it, 

Sarah Watkinson: it'll grow as long as it's got food? Um. When, when, when things are right. I think when it comes out into fresh air, also it's sort of emerged into a, a bit of open space, like a room in a building or perhaps a [00:11:45] coming up inside a dead tree. Mm-hmm. Um, then it'll produce a fruiting body, which is a rather spectacular big sponge-like thing, and it'll produce.

Billions and billions of rusty red spores. And so the poor householder sees this stuff [00:12:00] everywhere. Yeah. And laterally in my career, I had, um, I think just after I retired, I worked as some consultant with buildings and did some expert witness work. And this took me all over the country to all sorts of derelict castles and houses.

Oh, wow. And so I [00:12:15] was excited to find this phenomenon. A 

Claire Wathen: bit of a detective castles and wonder Yeah. Looking under the woods. To see what you might find. That sounds like an excellent BBC show that may not have been developed yet. Yes. Fungal doctor. [00:12:30] Um, and then how, how do these networks interact with other.

Fungal networks or organisms throughout, whether it be in the forest ecosystem or more 

Sarah Watkinson: fascinatingly. Yeah. Be because a, a fungal, a fungal individual is [00:12:45] a mycelium. Mm-hmm. Um, and they do all the things that an individual organism will do, like mate, or attack or compete or have, um, hostile or collaborative reactions with others.

And fungi have the ability to fuse [00:13:00] with another suitably, similar mycelium, but also not to, if it's. Different. 

Claire Wathen: Hmm. Some interesting parallels with how people can collaborate with each other, merge different disciplines, or stay in their own. Yes. It's [00:13:15] lanes Yes. So to speak. 

Sarah Watkinson: Yes. And of course it may be to do with sex.

And in that case, fungi have got a fascinating system and they have a, a, a genetic control of who's belongs to which sex. And there are 96 varieties in all that you [00:13:30] need to be compatible with. Um, another fungus is just, um, a difference at one genetic locus. So it's extremely likely mm-hmm. That you'll find somebody compatible.

It's just that they've got to be different from you. Okay. But it doesn't really ma matter otherwise who it is. [00:13:45]

Claire Wathen: Okay. It's a nice system to look at you. Um, and then what's the connection with soil? 

The Evolution of Fungal Research

Claire Wathen: I know that's another big area that you've researched nutrients and connections. Yes. 

Sarah Watkinson: I, I was [00:14:00] interested in soil right at the start because of the, the way fungi work in woods and, and also because of the Michal aspect.

But it became absolutely fascinating for me. I. When I was, um, the dry rot fungus was [00:14:15] spotted by the Joint Genome Institute of the United States as being, um, a fungus about which quite a lot was known, but for, for the Joint Genome Institute would be an absolutely perfect paradigm for a type of decay called brown [00:14:30] rot.

Claire Wathen: Hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And they were interested in finding, um, fungi, which would work in getting energy from renewables. So can you get a decomposer, which will make transformations in wood that gets energy out of it in a suitable [00:14:45] way? Okay. 

Claire Wathen: Yeah. 

Sarah Watkinson: So the way they were doing this is comparative whole genomics, whole compare, comparing whole genomes of microorganisms that were able to decompose cellulose materials.

And it, my fungus was accepted as a [00:15:00] representative brown rot fungus. 

Claire Wathen: Hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And that began an unbelievably fascinating, very late stage development in my career because they did this and then that a whole lot of people were interested in comparative phylogenomics or cal comparative [00:15:15] genomics. And so that immediately brought a whole lot of experts from all over the world to talk about the different ways in which this fungus broke down wood, how it was like to affect soil.

Mm-hmm. And brown rot is particularly interesting because it's a [00:15:30] relatively sophisticated sort of rot, doesn't drop whole wood, just takes out what it wants and leaves a residue of brown stuff. Oh, interesting. Mm-hmm. And that adds to forest soil. So that is actually making, making soil. And it's the reason I think [00:15:45] why a lot of boreal forest floor is, is a tan colored.

Mm. Mm-hmm. Red squirrels are red and pine Martins are red and, and the forest floor is interesting. 

Claire Wathen: And is it known why? It doesn't decompose the whole material, only what it needs. 

Sarah Watkinson: [00:16:00] I think it's an evolutionary story. It's expensive to make enzymes to break down wood, and so if you don't have to make enzymes to break down both the lignin and the cellulose, but if you can just suck the cellulose out and leave the lignin, yeah, maybe that's economic clear.[00:16:15]

Worthwhile and they carry on. 

Claire Wathen: Yeah. 

Sarah Watkinson: The people who were involved in this were extremely sophisticated comparative genomics people. 

Claire Wathen: Okay. 

Sarah Watkinson: Like David Hibbert and, um, his, his group who have always spent their time working out how different representative [00:16:30] Fungi diverged in the course of evolutionary history.

And they did so alongside the development of forests. Mm-hmm. So they first trees there about a hundred million years ago. And their divergences were tracked by fungi, which gradually acquired the ability to break down this sort of wood or [00:16:45] that sort of wood. 

Claire Wathen: Mm. 

Sarah Watkinson: Or to be Michael, rightly associated with tree roots.

And gradually you can begin by calibrating against a few fossils, you can begin to make an imaginative picture of how forests [00:17:00] and their soils evolved. Oh, wow. Over hundreds of millions of years. Unbelievably exciting. 

Claire Wathen: That is. And how, as you were developing your research and these collaborations and how did the field, the understanding of [00:17:15] fungi, how did that all evolve?

Did you see 

Sarah Watkinson: different trends or? There was, there was a very fascinating bit of, um, I suppose you'd call it academic and scientific politics. Really? Hmm. Because when it was, when [00:17:30] whole genomics were first discovered and the, the idea that you could modify genomes and genetics, there was a huge impetus behind biotechnology.

'cause that was going to breed Sure. A, a new Green Revolution. Mm-hmm. And [00:17:45] almost straight away the sort of things that I did was described as eco physiology and overtly laughed at. Oh, so it wasn't to, to begin with. There was a great chm between natural history of the traditional [00:18:00] sort and understanding nature.

Um, and then that. All the, the men of the future would be working with biotech and they'd be modifying plant genomes. Mm-hmm. And building the crops of the future 

Claire Wathen: because there were product applications, obvious [00:18:15] manufacturing, 

Sarah Watkinson: obvious end users and applications. And this was going to be feeding the world.

I mean, there was an enormous public revulsion at some of the gen anti genetic modifications that were done right at the start. Mm. So there was Terminator technology so that you could sell [00:18:30] seeds to farmers, you know, and they couldn't make their own seeds. Ah, okay. Um, and then there were various, um, I think misuses of the technology, stonewashed jeans, purple crisps, crisps, um, it just seemed [00:18:45] like a fantastic development was being rather hijacked, um, for money, you know?

Yeah, 

Claire Wathen: yeah. 

Sarah Watkinson: Um, not all of us were happy. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: But at the same time, anybody who was, anybody who was on top of this and moving forward and so [00:19:00] worrying times for a lot of people. Hmm. 

Claire Wathen: And this was roughly 

Sarah Watkinson: eighties. Okay. I suppose the first genetic modification of yeast, I'm, I'm my mind's not really coming up with this, but I think it's sort of early eighties.

Okay. And then in, [00:19:15] in Cambridge there was a plant breeding institute and also a chemical fertilizer in industry of Faissons. Mm-hmm. They were next to the plant breeding institute and there was collaboration between the two. And you know, what could be more potentially productive, but also what could be [00:19:30] more open to rather less.

Appealing exploitations. 

Claire Wathen: Yeah. Yeah. 

Sarah Watkinson: So for example, there was the flavor saver tomato. The flavor saver. Flavor. FLAV apostrophe RSAV apostrophe. Okay. [00:19:45] Oh, 

Claire Wathen: what a name. And the 

Sarah Watkinson: flavor saver tomato wasn't modified to taste better. It was modified to last longer on the shelf. 

Claire Wathen: Ah, okay. Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And, um, I remember going to the Royal Show and the science into practice tents, and the chap was offering the flavor saver tomato.

And, you [00:20:00] know, can you tell the difference? And I said, 

Claire Wathen: so it was, could you taste a difference? I 

Sarah Watkinson: tasted it and I much preferred the old tomato. The flavor saver tomato was rather bland. Oh. And the man was a bit. Fed up when I said I preferred them all. 

Claire Wathen: Is this a theme of your career? Speaking [00:20:15] straight and directly to 

Sarah Watkinson: It led straight and directly to my novel Native.

So yes. Perhaps we won't go there, I dunno. 

Claire Wathen: No, that's good. I mean, I think it's also speaks to the, the path that you carved out for yourself in a time that it [00:20:30] seemed less, um, less established. Did it feel like you were. Journeying with peers or you were really having to develop your own space? I was having to develop 

Sarah Watkinson: my, carve my own course a little bit and, um, I definitely [00:20:45] had to prove my worth.

And that was not a bad idea because perhaps I wasn't proving my worth. So I was given a lot of teaching to do. 

Claire Wathen: Hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And I'm good at teaching and I love doing that. And I've never regretted the amount of teaching that I did. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: We, mycologist have always been a bit of a sort of [00:21:00] small tribe and we all rather, um.

Made common cause and so I was invited to collaborate outside my own institution and had a very good time with at Dwells, born at the Mushroom Institute, the Horticulture Research International. Mm. Where I [00:21:15] had friends who, like me, were interested in intracellular proteases. What is that? Intracellular proteases?

Um, there are, pro proteins are used as storage for nitrogen inside cells. Mm-hmm. And I was interested in the idea that the dry [00:21:30] rot fungus has a store of protein, which it breaks down, so it makes intercellular protease to do that. When it finds that it needs to go to a new bit of wood, it'll mobilize all its aino acids by dissolving its own protein.

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And, um, we did some nice experiments and I was [00:21:45] tutored. It was delightful. I used to drive from Oxford to Warwick and have a lovely time with the mushroom people who showed me the mushroom people, the carry carry bird, who was just a such a friend. And, and so I was doing protease analysis and that, that was a lot of fun.[00:22:00]

Claire Wathen: And then most of the, the research sounds like you had active collaborators. In different stages, or was it more consistent, 

Sarah Watkinson: dif different people at different points, so mm-hmm. Then it seemed that nitrogen translocation was the, the really [00:22:15] interesting thing that was going on. Um, if you stop it with. And a mo aino acid, which is a junk food for fungi.

It takes it up then can't use it. You've got a cure for dry rot. 'cause it takes that along to the advancing front. Oh, okay. So it's done, grow, and then find it that can't grow. Hmm. And so that [00:22:30] produced a patent and it produced a second spin out company of Fox Oxford University. Wow. And gave me a lovely little.

Experiences mm-hmm. Industry. Yeah. And I learned a very important thing, which I would never have guessed, and I had this very naive view [00:22:45] that if you invented something that was obviously a good idea, um, everybody would love it. And they would want to buy the idea and sell it. No, no. They didn't want something that householders could just paint onto their fungus.

They just, they, they wanted the, um, you know, there's a whole [00:23:00] industry based upon, yeah. So, so it 

Claire Wathen: didn't have a lot of commercial, it had 

Sarah Watkinson: no commercial value at all. Really? No. I mean, it's a use now to control dry rot in houses. What do 

Claire Wathen: people use when dry rot happens at their house? 

Sarah Watkinson: It's a building problem [00:23:15] and a damp.

Oh, okay. So it's, it's only there because of damp wood. So if you dry the wood out Okay. And build it manual building. Interesting. It doesn't happen. 

Claire Wathen: And was that your only foray into the world of intellectual property and patents? 

Sarah Watkinson: Yes, but it was, again, it was a lot of fun. Mm-hmm. [00:23:30] And I was astounded that.

The thing, the other thing that stymied was that there was a pesticides act 1986 Oh. And they said the tests to make sure that it wasn't toxic to bees and fish would cost a million pounds. And nobody wanted to [00:23:45] pay that money when it was such a blue skies venture. Hmm. But then how is it that so many biocides, which slaughter bees and fish are now routine?

So that has always been, yeah, that is a head Scratch me [00:24:00] as a puzzle. 

Claire Wathen: Yeah. Yeah. 

Fungi's Role in Ecosystems

Claire Wathen: Well, I'd love to zoom out a little bit from the specific adaptations and functionality into the ecosystem overall, and I'd be, I'd love to hear how you've seen fungi interact throughout [00:24:15] ecosystems, whether in their forests or other.

Other environments. What are some of the interesting things that they do and how they intersect with other species, or 

Sarah Watkinson: mica, I think is the answer. Um, the tree mica [00:24:30] are the ones that my mushroom forming fungi make. And so there's a great breakthrough by Tom Bruns in Berkeley, but the late 1970s, early eighties, I think, um.

One of the troubles about mycelium is you can't tell who, who it belongs to, but [00:24:45] just look looking at it, you can't say this is something species because it's all just microscopic tubing and very hard to see it microscopic in the soil. Um, but Tom Bru worked out that you could do DNA fingerprinting of a mushroom that you can identify and then match that 

Claire Wathen: [00:25:00] Oh, to 

Sarah Watkinson: the fungi in the roots under the soil.

Mm-hmm. And so that was a huge eyeopener and that that showed that. The, the fungi that associated with roots and make it possible for trees to grow in places that otherwise wouldn't have enough nutrients. 'cause the fungi [00:25:15] scavengers the nutrients for the trees. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: Um. It made, it made it possible for people to look at.

Look at the variety of ect, microrisal fun and forests. They make the broader forest system impossible. 

Claire Wathen: Hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: So I think particularly in the [00:25:30] Boreal forest, that strip of, of conifer forest, that goes pretty well around the Northern hemisphere. Mm-hmm. Yeah. North America and Siberia. Um, this is all heavily dependent upon having microrisal fungi in soil that allow these [00:25:45] nitrogen limited forests to succeed.

Mm-hmm. With the phosphate and nitrogens very limited. 

Claire Wathen: And so the fungi are essentially transporting. Nitrogen across the forest, the system, the fun, you 

Sarah Watkinson: go out and they scavenge the nitrogen from the soil. Mm-hmm. So they grow, they [00:26:00] form into, they form a surface where cells lie, living cells of the root riboside living cells of the fungus.

Mm-hmm. And then they form a cellular interface that transports carbon from the plant into the fungus, enabling it to grow. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. [00:26:15]

Sarah Watkinson: And the fungus in return, um. Imports phosphate that is collected from the soil and nitrate, that it's collected from the soil, and that enables a plant to grow in places where it couldn't afford to really exploit this very poor soil [00:26:30] with roots, but these little tiny phi that can get in between the gaps and suck it 

Claire Wathen: up because it's constantly moving and it's, um, well, it's 

Sarah Watkinson: just very scarce.

Mm-hmm. 

Exciting Advances in Soil Imaging

Sarah Watkinson: I'm very excited by the work of Edith Hammer in Lund because she can actually make [00:26:45] visible the, the activities of. Organisms in soil. Oh, by clever imaging techniques and glass slides embedded in the soil. All through my career, we've just had to guess at what's going on. 

Claire Wathen: Yeah, it is. It sounds like a exciting development [00:27:00] to have the imagery available with technology advancing and new kinds of microscopic photography and analysis, understanding that.

Sarah Watkinson: Yes, I, I was really blown away by things [00:27:15] that you wouldn't ever expect, um, at that scale, at that scale. Um, surface tension is terribly important. Mm. And so you could have a dry soil and then it rains. And then at microscopic level, the surges of stuff, the way [00:27:30] the water just goes, whoosh, fast like that. And it becomes very difficult for creatures.

The, and to some something stick to the surface and others. Mm. When, you know, when you say water insect, walk across it, it's almost as though it's water walking on a rubber cover of a Yeah. Versus [00:27:45] sort of swimming pool or something holding in place and the connected 

Claire Wathen: tissue across all these different, um, components of the ecosystem.

Biomimicry and Bio-Inspiration

Claire Wathen: You know, I, about 15 years ago now, I was working in the. Emerging space of biomimicry or bio inspiration, looking at [00:28:00] natural adaptations, functionality, ecosystems, and how we could apply that to product development, design engineering. Oh, interesting. And so there's this whole, um, fascinating field now of everything from, you know.[00:28:15]

Specific product adaptations like robotics that mimic different, um, ways that geckos walk on walls, for example, or microbial surfaces inspired by sharks or other, um, hydrophobic surfaces. [00:28:30] Hydrophobic surfaces like lily hydro. Yes. Looking at nature as a metaphor for how we as humans can act or work together or design systems or, or structures.

I'm curious. You know, mycelium is [00:28:45] often a go-to example for how networks can function, the decentralization, the flow of information. And I'm curious, as an expert in this space, um, do you see those kinds of parallels? Are there [00:29:00] things that you would point out if people are looking for how the. How these networks can inspire us, 

Sarah Watkinson: I think.

Fungal Adaptations and Hydrophobic Surfaces

Sarah Watkinson: I think the hydrophobia is very interesting and the idea that a fungus can exude a protein which will transform trans, [00:29:15] transform a water repellent surface into a wettable surface. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: Just when they want to, so as to enable them to grow across the leaf and then go into it. Mm-hmm. And these local localized generations of huge pressures.

Again, stick themselves down firmly. The glue that [00:29:30] they make to stick the apria down on the leaf surface, then drive a little peg of mycelium in through the leaf surface. That's an extraordinary story, I think. Mm-hmm. 

Claire Wathen: And do they do this all the time or just in certain, 

Sarah Watkinson: certain species [00:29:45] situations. Okay.

Fungal Reproduction and Communication

Sarah Watkinson: It's certain species because spores are there all the time. Mm-hmm. Um, oh, a fungus like, um. A mildew or a rust or something. Mm-hmm. Um, we'll launch lots of spores into the air and most of them will just not [00:30:00] fall anywhere useful. But some of them will fall on a potential, um, host plant uhhuh, and then they'll be aware where they are and they'll immediately produce sticky stuff.

Mm-hmm. And then they'll begin to pump up. They're make up this apria, so it's the [00:30:15] appium is stuck down on the leaf surface and they wear gears up this pressure more than a car tire inside itself. And then it sticks this tiny, tiny little peg into the leaf. And then once it's got inside, it quickly pours all [00:30:30] the water pressure plasm down into, into there.

It empties the Appium and off it goes inside the leaf. I mean, it's amazing, isn't it? Bu it's amazing sort of 

Claire Wathen: to have that kind of capacity and be able to make use of the [00:30:45] nutrients and yes, materials that happen to be there. 

Sarah Watkinson: And also I think with fungi, there's so much. Possible biosynthesis. Most, a lot of fungi just keep this under wraps all the time.

And the same with morphogenesis. Mm. So the fungi that make mushrooms might only do it once in about 10 [00:31:00] years, and all they look like is mycelium. But those nuclei have everything you need to do to produce a mushroom stick, make the differentiate difference sorts of cells, have the tropic gills pointing down on the surface, and then fill the thing with extraordinary [00:31:15] toxins and things that interact with us and kill us.

You know? That's amazing. 

Claire Wathen: Why do they only, uh, sprout mushrooms, say once in 10 years? Is that about the environmental conditions or, I think, I think 

Sarah Watkinson: conditions. I mean, they, they, there's nothing they can do about [00:31:30] conditions. They just have to go with it. Mm-hmm. 

Claire Wathen: Well, that's very deep for all of us. 

Sarah Watkinson: They have the ability, the ability to be so protean, I'm afraid we're stuck with our.

Um, fake map and we've got to have a head and two legs and two arms. It's quite a [00:31:45] limitation. Yeah. It's, and we're limited to walking on the surface, you know? Mm. 

Claire Wathen: There's also a lot of fascinating components in how they communicate. Yes. So to speak. 

Sarah Watkinson: That's whole, whole other story. [00:32:00] The water modes. There used to be a lot of work on water modes, and they're just single cells in water.

Okay. And they make sex hormones. This is quite a long time ago for me. I'm, I'm just sort of trying to draw on my memory, but they, they make sex hor hormones, which are steroid hormones just like [00:32:15] us. Mm-hmm. Um, and they have male and female and they communicate by diffusible hormones that they release into the water.

And these things are sensed tiny quantities. So they put, um, a teaspoonful in a reservoir. And that is a sort of [00:32:30] concentration at which they can sense and then swim together. There used to be an awful lot of work on this when people did natural history. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And you could able to just do your own experiments in your own lab with your own microscope and walk and 

Claire Wathen: just follow the curiosity.

Sarah Watkinson: Follow  curiosity, and do [00:32:45] beautiful drawings. I, I sometimes worry about the amount of that sort of work, which is lost. And will anybody ever digitize all those old books, the water modes? Hmm. Microbiology of the Atmosphere. Wonderful books that people wrote, [00:33:00] um, researchers in Fungi by Bullah about the 19 hundreds.

Amazing. Hmm. Fungus light, you know, pure curiosity. 

Claire Wathen: Yes. Yes. And that was really at that split where more, um, genomic research and. [00:33:15] Product oriented funding was happening back in the eighties, you mentioned? I 

Sarah Watkinson: suppose so. We got quite utilitarian, I think post-war too. Mm. All those research institutes, um, east Maing, Wells born dotted around the country, they were meant to help get agriculture geared up [00:33:30] again after the war.

Claire Wathen: Yeah. More about that. Um, practicality. Um, given the amount of collaborations that you've had over the years, are there things that you looked for in. Someone that you wanted to work more with [00:33:45] or what makes a good collaboration? 

Sarah Watkinson: I think somebody who's interested in your work. I had a friendly senior figure in my research career and I said, well, here I am.

I'm sort of rather maroon because everybody's doing biotech around me [00:34:00] and I'm a mycologist, which is unbelievably unfashionable than what, what I know. What do I do now? I know today it's quite 

Claire Wathen: fashionable. Well, I know, I know. That's 

Sarah Watkinson: come full circle. But, so that's how I got, um, into the live cell imaging.

Mm. And that proved to be a. [00:34:15] Very productive indeed. And these, the fact that these networks formed spontaneously was, was news to quite a lot of lifestyle images. But it, it makes a very nice system to grow a thing on a flat, transparent slide. [00:34:30] And then to be able to observe that, that makes it very accessible.

Mm-hmm. So I think the thing is really to find somebody who, who's a, who's a fit. Mm-hmm. And again, the JGI collaboration was absolutely wonderful for me because I was interested in wood [00:34:45] decay and I hadn't thought of wood decay as a positive thing that would generate renewable energy. Yeah. I'd thought of it always as something to be avoided, you know, the history of Yeah.

Claire Wathen: Or contained or fixed and uhhuh, you 

Sarah Watkinson: know, pit prop props and ships timbers and so on. It's all bad news [00:35:00] and the, the word preservative industry is a huge mm, amazing industry with the most amazingly toxic products and a long history of. Toxicity. Mm. Creo. Ah 

Claire Wathen: hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: So the idea that it's all good [00:35:15] news and let get the fungi to do a bit more of this.

Yeah. What a 

Claire Wathen: fascinating reframe. Yes. To be able to bring in. 

Sarah Watkinson: Absolutely. And the, you know, was at this meeting in Vienna when somebody did actually literally tap me on the ba on the shoulder in the lecture room [00:35:30] and asked if I, if I was, um. If I was a person who worked on dry rot because they wanted a representative, brown rot fungus species for the Joint Genome Institute, community pro sequencing project.

What an introduction. I know. [00:35:45] And then I had to, I had to muster support, so I had to show that I think about 20 scientists supported the idea of dry rot as a brown rot representative, and I was delighted to be able to do that. So it, it was a, it was such a huge thing to be. Involved in [00:36:00] international collaboration.

Claire Wathen: Mm. Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And for me, that's always been very exciting. And I can remember when I was a little girl, my father who was a scientist and doctor used to be so thrilled when he got a Christmas card from Russians because those were the days of the Cold War. [00:36:15]

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And it's, there's just such a buzz about talking to people with real interest in other countries mm-hmm.

Who've just all converged on the same fascinating story. And that's, and that we have the joy. 

Claire Wathen: Shared [00:36:30] interest in things in common, even if they're coming from different places. 

Sarah Watkinson: Yes. As human beings, we can talk as human beings. Even though there may be all sorts of conflicts brewing, we can still talk as human beings who are fascinated filled with wonder, [00:36:45] curiosity.

Hmm.

Claire Wathen: That's beautiful. 

The Intersection of Science and Poetry

Claire Wathen: Writing is a big part of your story as well. You have written over 90 scientific publications [00:37:00] been cited. Co-authored, um, the Fungi textbook that we've talked about. Um, I'm curious how, what role has writing played in, in your work in research and, um, you've moved as well into [00:37:15] creative writing.

Mm-hmm. More recently. I would love to hear how poetry and fiction came into your focus and what that is bringing at this point. Well. 

Sarah Watkinson: I'd always wanted to write. Um, I wrote [00:37:30] my first poem at seven and um. My parents were terribly pleased and they were so pleased that I was allowed to come downstairs after I should have been impaired.

So that was my first,

um, and I've [00:37:45] always, I was always, I've always been rather good at English because my parents both spoke good English, and English was just, literature was normal part of life, big side of me that would've liked to go in for the humanities, but 

Claire Wathen: mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: I, I felt I had to earn my living and I couldn't see how I was going [00:38:00] to do that in the humanities.

I wasn't that good. And, and at the same time I was. So drawn to chemistry and the excitement of it. So I took rather a risk. So when I came to a town and I was looking around, somebody said, you've got to have an exit [00:38:15] strategy. So I thought, well, my exit strategy is going to go back to this feeling of unfinished business, try and write something.

My tutor Jenny Lewis, is a marvelous poet on a marvelous. Um, teacher of poetry and what I really wanted at school was to let get somebody to teach me [00:38:30] how to write a sonnet, how to write in form. I thought that would be such a good thing to do. 

Claire Wathen: Mm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And Jenny did systematically teach us exactly how to write sonnets.

And so what, we did homework once a week and my homework was to write a petro and sonnet, which is the one with the tricky [00:38:45] rhyme scheme. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: I was at a loss because all the models. Well, Petro himself wrote them all love letters to his mistress, you know? Um, but I thought that I would, I would mine the literature for Wonder and came on this brilliant paper in current [00:39:00] biology by dca, um, called Dung Beatles.

Used the Milky Way for orientation Dung Beatles used the Milky 

Claire Wathen: Way for, for 

Sarah Watkinson: Orient orientation. Oh, I was up and away. 

Claire Wathen: Oh, what a title. 

Sarah Watkinson: And so my first Petro and Sonnet, who was highly [00:39:15] commended by the very significant poet and teacher. George er. 

Claire Wathen: Oh, wow. 

Sarah Watkinson: And I found my way into the delightful community of poetry where nobody makes any money.

Um, there's no competition. 

Claire Wathen: Mm. No, 

Sarah Watkinson: no, no knifing in the back or [00:39:30] not overtly. Mm. And it was just such a lovely community to be part of. Mm-hmm. So, so, because I think when you retire, you feel it can feel a bit at sea to begin with. It's particularly if you love your work mm-hmm. You could be overturned by it.

Mm-hmm. And suddenly [00:39:45] I had all these. New things to do and new people to, to work with. So, 

Claire Wathen: and it sounds like different, different dynamics between people as well. Absolutely. Less competitive, perhaps. Less 

Sarah Watkinson: competitive. 

Claire Wathen: And so you're really helping facilitate a community of [00:40:00] people who are both coming from the sciences and humanities, or are these mostly poets?

Are you 

Sarah Watkinson: They're mostly poets. Mm-hmm. But poets are getting much more interested, I think. In talking to science, 

Claire Wathen: [00:40:15] why do you think that is? 

Sarah Watkinson: Climate emergency. Mm-hmm. Biodiversity crisis, nature has always been, um, a huge driving thing for poets and now that it's threatened mm, there's a real impetus and, uh, [00:40:30] huge emotion behind this.

Claire Wathen: Yeah. You know, we've been having a fairly technical conversation mm-hmm. About. How these organisms interact with one another, poetry and other kinds of writing offer this different lens, [00:40:45] different opportunity to Yes. Um, invite people into such incredible happenings in the natural world. 

Sarah Watkinson: Exactly. Large and small.

Exactly. And, and how did it ever become something that was difficult to do? Mm. [00:41:00] Because a hundred, 200 years ago, everybody would be filled with wonder and awe and want to write poetry about the natural world. And then for some reason it stopped happening and I didn't really know why that should have been.

Claire Wathen: Why do you think 

Sarah Watkinson: I [00:41:15] have a colleague who wrote. Some interesting history about this, and there just might have been a suspicion that natural history was hijacked, um, by the upper middle classes. All these, the clergy, you know, writing rather, [00:41:30] maybe rather, um, what, how can I put this? They wrote it in the language of maybe the professional classes and took it away from less accessible.

From less accessible. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. [00:41:45]

Sarah Watkinson: And a lot of the richness of poetry about nature comes from people who are not so removed from it, but are among it. 

Claire Wathen: I do think there's things like the, the SPO festival that you're doing. Bringing these disciplines together very [00:42:00] explicitly opens a wider invitation. 

Sarah Watkinson: It certainly did in, in the White and Woods residency, I was surprised by the appetite for poetry about nature.

From everybody who signed up, and also the enthusiasm of some of the [00:42:15] scientists who felt that this is a way of talking to a wider demographic. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: Right beyond the academy and getting out back to people. Mm-hmm. 

Claire Wathen: How do you feel, just sort of looking back on where. Ology has [00:42:30] evolved. Do you, do you feel like the field is more mainstreamed or is it still 

Sarah Watkinson: I'm very excited by the interest and now is in Rewilding.

Claire Wathen: Yes. 

Sarah Watkinson: And at the Lever HU Center, one of the, um, research students who's there, who I know and have come across, [00:42:45] um, Jed Solomon. Is actually working upon the fungal aspect of Rewilding. Hmm. So he's been working, for example, farm ed, which is, um, a regenerative farm research set up in the COTS worlds. 

Claire Wathen: Okay. [00:43:00]

Sarah Watkinson: And they have some controlled trials where they're looking at the development of.

Soil populations under different sorts of, of grassland management and different sorts of, of crop management. And, and j is interested in the [00:43:15] accompanying changes in the mycorrhizal fungi and other fungi and working with, um, q and with the Le Hume Center people. And I think his work is very, very interesting and I, I can, I look forward to it.

Well, it'll be after my time, but I can [00:43:30] see a great new future mm-hmm. For, mm-hmm. For looking at that. 

Claire Wathen: And there seems to be more of a, a mainstream curiosity in, you know, there's. Uh, several, several books [00:43:45] like Entangled or Oh Yes. You know, the Mycelium Effect. Absolutely. 

Sarah Watkinson: Huge Hunger for Nature. 

Claire Wathen: Bringing, bringing natural sciences into, um, spaces where you don't have to have that kind of academic [00:44:00] background to understand and be interested in and connect with these species.

Sarah Watkinson: Yes, yes. I think there is. I used to, um, one of the very nice things that happened while I, in my later years teaching at Oxford was that [00:44:15] undergraduates were encouraged to do their own project with a supervisor. And so you could find somebody who had found your lectures interesting and wanted to know more at a practical level.

And I found it an absolute delight to go into the woods with these people and show them interesting things. Mm-hmm. And [00:44:30] then to link them up to somebody who could do molecular ecology and molecular genetics and look how. Try and get a collaboration to, to develop so that they would look at, um, the variety of fungi, for example, the deep oceans or on [00:44:45] leaves beside Izzy roads opposed to, as opposed to leaves in the middle of a wood and 

Claire Wathen: mm-hmm.

Where do you think the field will be in 10 or 20 years? 

Sarah Watkinson: Oh gosh. I wonder if we'll understand a lot more [00:45:00] about. The metabolic aspects of it, the, the, the molecular synthesis that fungi do. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: We already use an awful lot of fungal drug statins or a fungal invention. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: But I Sure, I would be interested to see how [00:45:15] that develops and I suppose, um.

Um, biomimetics systems, which are really nothing to do with the same molecules, but do similar things like the, the great tunneling machines mm-hmm. That make crossrail mm-hmm. Do just what fungi do. They have an [00:45:30] advancing tip mm-hmm. Which bores through and then it builds itself, its its own walls, um, from what it's excavated.

Claire Wathen: Yeah. There's so much inspiration we can take from how the networks. Grow [00:45:45] how they sense nutrients and build and then dissipate, um, the decentralization. There's no one central hub. Mm-hmm. Um, what would it look like if we imagine [00:46:00] cities or transportation processes or, yes. Other things more directly inspired by them.

Sarah Watkinson: Wouldn't that be great? Or if you could find, if you could work out a way in which a, a city which had developed, for example, employed its population in something really [00:46:15] locally worthwhile mm-hmm. Would draw a railway line connection to itself. That would be exactly like what dry Rock does. 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: So you wouldn't build HS two until Barrow in furnace.

It suddenly developed a whole mass of new and interesting industry, and then suddenly the. The railroad sort [00:46:30] of grow towards it. Yeah. I 

Claire Wathen: suppose it's more, you know, demand driven design Exactly. As opposed to predetermined at the beginning before behavior shows you where yes, people may want to be 

Sarah Watkinson: Yes.

Maybe [00:46:45] have a, a a a path of, of, of funding and facilitation that follows, um. A proven need or rather than a theoretical. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I suppose one of the ideas behind H [00:47:00] HS two is to empower the north, but maybe you need to see which parts of the North want to empower themselves. Mm-hmm. And then see what, 

Claire Wathen: yeah.

I've always seen Mycelial network says also an inspiration of [00:47:15] coming not from one source out, but rather letting it evolve so it's more of a bottom up. Approach, and that might be too, too linear of a comparison, but it seems like a metaphor of actually being more [00:47:30] intuitive, more emergent. 

Sarah Watkinson: Why don't we let everybody fuse that's compatible and just let, because if you allowed compatibility between different communities, like poetry, writing communities actually facilitated by social media mm-hmm.

That that's a case in point, I think. 

Claire Wathen: [00:47:45] Mm-hmm. I just, maybe you're already living that out. I think I have, so, 

Sarah Watkinson: so I've made quite a number of friendships online through poetry connections. And after you've exchanged poems with some people mm-hmm. You really do feel you know them and when you [00:48:00] meet, you know them a lot better than you would have.

Mm-hmm. If you've known them physically for mm-hmm. A long time. 

Claire Wathen: That's very interesting. You're already embodying this, it seems so a 

Sarah Watkinson: bit 

Claire Wathen: worrying when you think about. [00:48:15] How these disciplines have come together with poetry and science. What are your hopes for the space looking forward? Are there things that you would love to see or things that you're energized by and the bringing together of different disciplines?

Oh, [00:48:30]

Sarah Watkinson: I can't think. I didn't really know enough about it to say. I still feel a terrific amateur when it comes to the humanities. I'm just very gratified by what's happened so far, I suppose. Mm-hmm. And the fact that poetry is actually [00:48:45] explicitly interested in science. I find very heartwarming. Mm-hmm. And the poets I most respect see no problem.

They just don't see science and poetry as different. 

Claire Wathen: Hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: So, 

Claire Wathen: and they're both based in curiosity and [00:49:00] wonder, 

Sarah Watkinson: wonder and precision. Mm-hmm. And technical, the understanding of using a language for a purpose, whether it's to communicate truthful empirical science, or to communicate emotions and [00:49:15] understandings and mm-hmm.

People who could live with language. I don't see why they can't use it. 

Claire Wathen: Yeah. Perhaps they're not so different after all. I don't think they 

Sarah Watkinson: are. I mean, I think you, the question you asked me right at the beginning is how did they ever get split apart? Mm-hmm. Is the interesting one. [00:49:30] Mm-hmm. And I, I suppose I just think of the post-war utilitarian education as something that was necessary at the time, but it did seem to split.

Mm-hmm. Grammar schools in particular. Yeah. I think I get the impression that public schools had the [00:49:45] facilities to continue to show people, um, the arts, but that the school I went to was, I think I read somewhere designed to populate the factories with middle managers after the war. 

Claire Wathen: Wow. That puts a fine point on [00:50:00] it.

Sarah Watkinson: It does. Rather doesn't, it was rather surprised that the syllabus was heavily influenced by the local, local government, you know? 

Claire Wathen: Mm-hmm. 

Sarah Watkinson: And so it did, it was good for me because mostly girls weren't taught serious physics and chemistry, and I was, I was taught wonderful [00:50:15] physics and chemistry that mostly would only be for boys.

Hmm. So in a way, it was good. 

Claire Wathen: Absolutely. I mean, here we are now, and here we are now. The beautiful combination of your. Deep expertise in sciences with a [00:50:30] new area of exploration and poetry also seems like a, a lovely combination to bring together. 

Sarah Watkinson: It excites me a lot. Mm-hmm.

And I owe so many people, so much. I mean, this is, [00:50:45] this is the point where I'd write my acknowledgement section and it goes on and on and on, starting with my parents who are both visionary. Um, very good teachers, very full of life, and that was a long, long time 

Claire Wathen: ago. No, that's [00:51:00] beautiful. 

Advice for Aspiring Scientists

Claire Wathen: If you were to meet students in Oxford today that are starting out and picking where they're gonna focus their studies or how they're gonna approach their [00:51:15] career and they're in the sciences, what kind of advice would you have for them?

Sarah Watkinson: Um.

Interest, I think follow your interest. [00:51:30] Um, don't be too put off when people say you are no good at math. So that's not for you. There's probably a workaround, 

Claire Wathen: um, 

Sarah Watkinson: but that's probably bad advice. 

Claire Wathen: I think it's great advice. 

Sarah Watkinson: Mm-hmm. I know my father would say [00:51:45] interest is, is the driver. I was very charmed and pleased that when we invited David Morley to come and talk at St.

Hilda's, he said he didn't want to give an academic talk or, but he would come and speak human. [00:52:00] And I think that's what we're doing. 

Claire Wathen: Come and speak human, speak human. Yeah. Well that at the end of the day is what? We're exploring with this project. It's been such a privilege and pleasure to have you, Sarah, and just go into the [00:52:15] world of fascinating, um, fungal networks, dry rot, interconnectedness between forest ecosystems and urban ecosystems, and how we can bring the sciences together with, with the arts as well.[00:52:30]

Sarah Watkinson: Well, thank you for letting me go on and on on all the things that fascinate me, so it's been great to talk to you, Claire. Thank you very, very much. 

Claire Wathen: Thanks for listening to The Web of Us. The Web of Us is produced by Josie Colter and Ben Beheshty at Studio Goldstar [00:52:45] hosted by me, Claire Wathen, visiting fellow at the Saïd Business School in Oxford.

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