Environmental and Human Health, Shaping Risk, and Policy with Julia Gohlke

Welcome back to Environmental Professionals Radio, Connecting the Environmental Professionals Community Through Conversation, with your hosts Laura Thorne and Nic Frederick! 

On today’s episode, we talk with Julia Gohlke, Professor of Environmental Health, Department of Population Health Sciences at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg VA about Environmental and Human Health, Shaping Risk, and Policy.   Read her full bio below.

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Showtimes: 
2:13 - People over animals?
6:15 - Interview with Julia Gohlke begins
12:18 - Managing expectations with Environmental Health 
22:37 - Data use in Julia's Work
28:21 - Field Notes with Julia!

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Connect with Julia Gohlke at https://www.linkedin.com/in/julia-gohlke-6015731b7/

Guest Bio: 
Dr. Gohlke is a professor in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Virginia Tech. She received a PhD from the University of Washington, School of Public Health, Seattle, WA and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. She has authored over 90 peer reviewed publications using toxicology and spatial epidemiology methods to examine health outcomes associated with chemical exposures, living in close proximity to resource extraction sites, and heat and flood events.  She teaches courses in environmental health and risk assessment, and directs a graduate training program in rural environmental health.
 

Music Credits
Intro: Givin Me Eyes by Grace Mesa
Outro: Never Ending Soul Groove by Mattijs Muller

Transcript

Hello. Welcome to EPR with your favorite environmental enthusiasts, Nic and Laura. On today's episode, Laura and I talk about people liking people more than animals. We interviewed Julia Gohlke about environmental and human health, shaping risk and policy. And finally, hippos can't actually swim. They have very big bones, so big and dense, in fact, that they are barely buoyant at all. They don't swim and instead perform a slow motion gallop in the riverbed. That's right. When they call them river horses, that's what they mean. Um, they even sleep underwater and they have a build that basically lets them bob up to take a breath and sink back down without waking, which is both cool and terrifying to think about. Yeah, they don't actually have fat. They're just all muscle. They are tanks. So yeah, they seem like they have fat, but they don't, and that's why they can run like 30 miles an hour, which is crazy. It doesn't make any sense, but you can't outrun a hippo, so don't, uh, don't mess with them. That's the rule, yeah. No, when I was in Africa, we got to see them running at night, and they are huge and scary and fast. Yeah, no thank you. No thank you. That's wild.

Hit that music. NAEP just completed another round of essential and advanced NEPA workshops. Our next event is scheduled in person for November 13 and 14th in Denver, Colorado. These training workshops are designed for emerging and experienced environmental professionals engaged in the preparation of environmental assessments and environmental impact statements to fulfill the federal lead agency responsibilities pursuant to the National Environmental Policy Act. These courses are designed to help you understand the requirements and how to fulfill the spirit and legislative intent of NEPA. That's absolutely essential in a time like this where agency policies are being updated rapidly. Please check that out at www.NAPE.org.

Let's get to our segment. I had one about like, people like people more than animals. Yeah, what's that all about? I mean, when we've seen this, like I think one of my all-time favorite public meetings that we ever did was for a project to take a transmission line from Canada to New York City, and one town decided that they wanted to have us, they insisted that we have an a public meeting with them because the transmission line was coming out of the water. And into their town and then back in the water and so it was avoiding sturgeon spawning habitat. Right. And it was basically, you know, they came up with a, a plan to just, you know, eviscerate the project, but so much of it was, you know, they didn't understand what was happening. Everybody thought this transmission line was like a transmission, like a above ground pipe, like you'd see like a pipeline for oil, and we're like, no, it's 6 inches in diameter and it goes. You know, 12 ft underground, 20 ft, 12 to 20 ft underground. They were worried about cemeteries, like they, they were going to plow through their graves and I'm like, well, if you're digging them that deep, that's, that's on you, really. But truly the main thing was that they were literally like, why would you put this through here to save a fish? They're like, we're people, we're more important than a fish, and that that was said many different times in many different ways at that meeting. 

And it was something interesting with the interview today where hearing our interviewee talk about that, or it's like, I, people are genuinely more interested in people than animals. And as sad as it is, I mean, it's true. It makes sense, but I don't know, like, it's like one of those things where it makes my heart a little sad. I don't know how you feel about it, Laura, but it's like, she's right, but. I'm I don't know. I mean, it is sad. I think that the better thing is to recognize that we are all God's creatures or universe creatures or Mother Earth's creatures, and that we should not be singling out one more important than the other. But at the same time, it's natural instinct to protect your own, you know. And so I think so much of what we do is actually very primal. And so yes, we're having a sophisticated public meeting, but we're just Pumping out primal thoughts and instincts, and one of them is to preserve our own. Yeah, and that's a very good thought too, because I think environmental professionals sometimes spend a lot of time out in the wilderness, you know, I mean, like I've had interviews where people are like, I don't like people, and I'm like, well, that's not great for the team you'll be working with. I mean, it's like a good thing because it's, I love that we're talking about industries in all aspects, not just the ones that, you know, you say environmental professional, everyone thinks that you're in the woods, you know, wrestling bears or whatever. So it's really neat to get different perspective on that and uh it was really fun. I enjoyed it. Yeah, I mean, as a vegetarian for a long time, it's, there's a lot of times when people are like, oh, I'm such an animal lover, and I'm like, OK, cool, how's that steak? Yeah. Yeah, there's always limits.

They really are. Sometimes food's too good or whatever, and uh yeah. Yeah, I mean, I don't take it personally, but it's just, it's like, it's also when people say that people are first or we're more important. There's also this like disengagement or detachment that we have for other living things. Yeah, that's a good point. And you know it's also self-preservation, right? You don't want to think about it every single time you're having a steak, or you can't eat the steak, you know. Yeah, which is why I can't eat it. Yeah, which is, was it like, uh, Jim Gaffigan, I think had a great joke about it where he's just like, you know, you just pretend that the, the chicken was a real SOB, you know, yeah, it deserves to be eaten. It's like, yeah, good thing this chicken stole my wallet, you know, it's pretty to keep it, yeah. Um, but yeah, yeah, I don't know, I think we're rambling, but uh yeah, I think that's good enough. Why don't we get to our interview? Sounds good. 

Hello, and welcome back to EPR. 

Today we have Julia Gohlke with us. Julia is a professor of environmental health in the Department of Population Health Sciences at Virginia Tech. Go Hokies. Julia, welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you. Thank you for having me. So, yeah, I'm happy to have you. And what's it like teaching environmental health right now? What's that all about? What topics are you covering? Yeah, well, that's an interesting question. You know, when I started my career, it was much more around chemical risk assessment, so how chemicals affect the human body and how we use different systems to test and make sure that the chemicals we put out into the environment. are safe, depending on different exposure scenarios. And I would say that the field has kind of grown to include a lot more than just chemical risk assessment. So these days when we teach environmental health or intro environmental health class, we talk about climate change and how that impacts human health, different social issues. So built environment and how that impacts our health. So we've made a progression for sure. So, I mean, that sounds like it starts to cover lots of different areas, like, so how do you get your students to focus on, do they focus on any one thing? are they learning a whole bunch of different things and then focusing later? How, what's your approach to teaching? In an intro environmental health class, so at Virginia Tech, we have basically two tracks for our master's in public health program. And one is more around health behavior, another is around infectious disease. 

And so they take, they have to take environmental health and really we want to kind of give them opportunities if they're more focused on infectious disease. We look at exposures, environmental exposures that could impact infectious disease. If they're more focused on health behavior, we might look at things that, like the food environment that affects different health behaviors. So we try and meet students where they're at and what their interests are. Environmental health is such a huge field that we can typically find something that really pique their interest. Uh, for sure, but I love it because like, you know, the, the, a part of me, like, you know, I actually have a little bit of background in like what they call conservation medicine, right? That's what I did my grad work in, you know, working with wildlife disease and how that affects human health. And, uh, so, so I see you also, you had your career, you started your career in toxicology, which is pretty cool, but how did you get from toxicology to where you are now? Yeah, so definitely when I was first starting out and in my PhD actually in my undergrad, you know, I was doing a lot more around fisheries, and I was interested actually in in wildlife, health. And I was working with this professor in my undergrad in which he noticed a hybridization event in a stream in California of two, minnow species. And, um, his hypothesis was that it was a chemical contaminant that actually caused this kind of endocrine disruption and caused As this hybridization of fish. And that was like my first exposure in undergrad was like, wait, chemicals can do that? So then that got me really interested in like, well, wait a second, if they're doing that to fit, if that's, you know, the hypothesis of how this happens in fish, what are those chemicals doing to humans? Right. So that's what really got me interested then in environmental health and going for, you know, for a master's and a PhD and looking at how chemicals affect brain development. I was really interested in how different chemicals that we have in our environment affect. Brain development and then how we use animal models to evaluate safe levels of exposure of those chemicals because the brain development and animal models is quite different than in in humans and primates. 

And so I was really interested in how we kind of make that translation. So, studied a lot of different, yeah, chemicals in that regard and how risk assessment models are used to kind of make that jump. And of course, now all I can think about is all the chemicals and how they affected my brain growing up and uh like I don't know, like what's the most shocking thing you found about like, like what you've seen like how chemicals impact humans, for example. Yeah, I mean, I think the lead story is an interesting one. We've known lead is really a neurodevelopmental toxicant, so it really affects the developing brain. But it's been around forever, you know, I mean, it's, and so, and it's really, you know, it kind of comes up most recently on lead pipes. And through drinking water. I remember, again, when I first even just really learned that it was an issue. I remember calling my dad up. So I, my family hunts a lot. And we used to do the little lead pellets into the shotgun cases. We would like do that with my dad, you know, put it on. And we would and when we're fishing too, like the little weights, like we would clamp them with our teeth, you know? Yeah, yeah. And I remember first learning about it and I called my dad and I was like, that was like probably really dangerous. Like, why, you know, why are we doing that? He's Like, Oh, it's fine. You know, it's just a little bit of exposure. And so there's also this like risk perception thing that I think, you know, has definitely changed throughout time, that is really, really interesting, you know, what, what kind of exposures are we should really be concerned about versus not. So I think that was probably one of the most kind of, as I've grown in the field, yeah, one of the most interesting things that I've been thinking about. 

Yeah, no, that makes total sense. I mean, don't worry, I'm still not gonna sleep tonight. I'm still gonna be wondering what else is affecting, no kidding, no kidding. Um, no, but it's really interesting. I think it's a really good point you bring up is that a lot of times we, we hear things are bad and we're like, oh, OK, well, I'll never touch lead again or I'll never be near. But again, I'll make sure that we eradicate lead from the planet, and that's not necessarily the right or smart thing to do all the time. So how do you manage those expectations when people do come to you and are like, we have to get rid of everything, right? Like, I know POS is a big thing that, that people keep talking about now, um, and you know, we can't even measure to the point, you know, because it's so small, it's hard to get rid of at all. So how do you handle that kind of fear? Yeah, I agree. That is a really challenging part of environmental health. So when I think about it in terms of, you know, EPA sets these standards or they think about like a risk in 1 in a million. And a lot of people, like, again, that's like a very weird kind of concept, and I don't even really know what that means, you know, oh, you have a risk of 1 in a million of getting cancer if you are exposed to this level. You know, if you have it in your drinking water for your lifetime, you know, it's a lifetime cancer risk, you know, this kind of thing. And it's very difficult then to kind of translate that to just everyday settings. And people want to compare it to other risks too. It's like, OK, well, what's in the whole scheme of things, is that like the same as my risk for getting in a car and, you know, having a car accident. 

Well, No, it's not. But those aren't really actually good comparisons either, right? Because one is exposure that, that you don't really, you know, know or have agreed to take on, whereas one is that exposure's like, yeah, cars are risky, but gosh, you know, I'm, they make my life a lot simpler and I'm gonna use it, and I know there's risk. And so, so thinking about like the role of our government and kind of Minimizing these chemical risks that we, we view as like, shouldn't necessarily be there or what's not our personal responsibility versus other risks in our daily lives. Like that is, it's a very hard kind of thing to grasp. And it really, at the end of the day, it's a societal decision, right? Do, are we, do we want our government to regulate chemicals down to the 1 in a million risk? Or are we like, hey, Maybe not, like, I'm fine with 1 in 10,000, you know, so that, that, that's like a societal decision that, you know, we just have to figure out. Gosh, it's so funny though. I love like the idea of risk is always like, to me, it's always very, it's kind of like influenced a ton by control, right? Planes are far less risky than cars. I feel much more uncomfortable on a plane because I can't fix it if something goes wrong, right? I have no control. Over that, and I think there's a lot of that too when it comes to these kinds of things. It's like, oh, I can't even begin to understand how to control for chemicals, and it just seems kind of like such a hard concept for people to grasp. Is that kind of what you see as well? Yeah, and also, yeah, the perception too, again, that uncontrollable versus controllable, it is so important when you perceive and decide to take on risk. 

And different people have different levels, you know, so there have been tons of studies around that that are really interesting. look at differences based on gender, based on socioeconomic class, all these things that are, yeah. Well, kind of like I have friends who will only drink bottled water and I'm like grateful that we can drink out of our tap after like traveling to other countries where you can't. So like their level of risk that they're willing to take on drinking their water is different than mine. But then I also know about plastics and everything else, and I'm like, I don't know which I don't, I can't weigh this risk either, so I'm just going with the tap water because it's cheaper. Yeah. And how you weigh different risks too, you know, so like an ecological risk from plastic pollution versus a human health risk, and the bottled water thing is really interesting. Do you guys talk about that in the classroom? Like, how do, what are the students learning around this stuff? Absolutely. And thinking about kind of, you know, Ranking risks and what, you know, are kind of personal preferences of like, you know, I care more about plastic pollution impacting dolphins. Um, I don't care as much about that. I, I care about, you know, my future, you know, endocrine levels and, you know, the even the possibility of messing with my endocrine system. It is scarier and generates more fear in me. So I'm gonna, you know, do everything I can to prevent that, you know, and it's different for different people. One of the really interesting things that came up in a journal club very recently is around fluoride risk, and that's been in the media. 

Yeah I was about to ask you about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when I was kind of going through grad school and stuff, you know, things that affected brain development in early, like, you know, in utero, or early childhood, like blood, again, the classic. And then has impacts all through life. Like that, that was like, kind of, you know, if you kind of rank health risks, that was really high, you know, kind of like, we don't want any chemicals that do that. Like that's, that's kind of scary. Dental cavities, uh, you know, oh well, you know, yeah, everyone has them. I've got feelings, like, yeah, it's like we don't, we would like to prevent them, but like, do we really care about that much? Probably not. But it was so interesting because it was literally like it felt like it was flipped. We asked students, you know, what do you think is more kind of important, just like to you personally? They're like, well, you know, I think, you know, I remember one student saying, I think even if there is a little bit of brain development, you know, impact, if you're in a good school and a nurturing environment, can't those like behavioral, like, can't that be, you know, just reversed? And most people don't have dental insurance. And so having, like, you know, losing all your teeth and things like that's like, really, I would rate that as really important. And so it was like this really I like walked out of that I'm like, wow. 

This whole like health risk perception thing is like so different. Yeah, well, it's gotta be like that's I gotta keep it very interesting for you because it's like, you know, you're talking even about like, you know, climate change and how that's become much more prevalent as well. I mean, I don't know if that changes your conversations in class as well. I assume it does to some degree. So like, are we transitioning away from talking about toxicology risk to climate risk, or is it just kind of and in addition to? I would say it's in addition to right now, but I would say that there are some people that feel like, you know, there's only so much space. And so once you start talking about climate change a lot, it's kind of crowding out the kind of the chemical risk assessment part. I would say that, not that I've done like a scientific study on this, but just thinking about, you know, colleagues in different schools of public health and departments of environmental health. The environmental epidemiology component of those departments have they've grown a lot more, whereas the toxicology part either stays the same or has diminished. And most of those environmental epidemiology folks are looking at things that are broader in like climate change or built environment. I would say that it's definitely much more a component of environmental health now than it was in previously. And so I think the challenge to me is, again, going back to that. Risk comparison, it is so difficult to kind of compare those in some ways, very, um, detailed physiological models of toxicology and risk associated with exposures to chemicals to something like risk associated with climate change that is gonna be so felt so differently around the world. So. Yeah, yeah, speaking of that though, so these are very nuanced and complex conversations, obviously, because everyone has their own lens and their own perspective and ideas and thoughts and beliefs. 

But you, you yourself have, you know, you grew up in West Virginia and you've traveled and lived other places. So how is, you know, time and place is also another thing that affects your perspective, in addition to how old you are and where you are in the world. So can you think of like how that has shaped how you perceive environmental health? Yeah, I think it has a lot. So growing up in a very, very rural place with a dad that was a fisheries biologist for the state and going out on surveys in the summer with him and Again, just being in a very outdoorsy kind of environment, I think that that has really shaped even my decision to go into public health, because as I mentioned, I started more in kind of ecological and fisheries and wanting to stay in that field. And I kind of realized that, well, people care about people a lot more usually than people care about other species. So. It might be useful to understand that and understand how it's kind of changing, you know, our decisions about our, you know, our environment are changing our health. And so that's what really kind of moved me into the field. And I would contrast that to a lot of other people that are in public health. They come at it from a very different perspective and a different background. So I, yeah, I've always kind of been a little bit more interested in the larger ecological forces um that are happening in the world and not necessarily just the very specific chemical risks that humans may experience in their daily lives. Right. Well, you spent a couple of years at the Environmental Defense Fund. 

Were you doing this type of thing there? Yes, so the Environmental Defense Fund, I looked at primarily air pollution policy, so clean air. Act and how we place monitors around the US to be in compliance with the Clean Air Act. And if that has a way of some people are overexposed versus others, and we're not kind of capturing that from those monitors. So really looking at differences in exposure that aren't necessarily captured by our regulatory monitoring network, essentially, yeah. Yes, yes, I don't know if, you know, people know how much monitoring of everything is out there and so, um, your students, I assume are also learning to incorporate data and you use a lot of data and monitoring. When you bring the data into a conversation like this, what role does it play and how do you determine where you're getting it from and stuff? Yeah, well, traditionally we've always gone for the government sources, so the EPA has air monitoring data available as well as water monitoring data available. Sometimes, you know, states also publish that data and so being in Blacksburg sometimes will go to the local data sources, so the health department or in, in the case of Virginia and the Department of Environmental Quality, but because the federal kind of composite sources of data are actually in some ways easier to navigate, we have traditionally used those. We might have to change that a little bit going forward because I know a lot of those data sources are not. Necessarily being kept up, so. Yes, that is interesting. So, if we don't have these data sources, how will that affect our conversations about this moving forward? Yeah, I'm not sure, like it's, it's a whole new world, right? I mean, What are we gonna use? Um, I, I, you know, I built a career around using these types of data to then estimate exposure that then we use with epidemiology or toxicology information to say like, OK, that exposure is safe or not, and we need to do something about it, like. That's how we make decisions, right? And with the data, like, I don't, you know, how our decisions made, you know, so I don't, I'm not understanding exactly what's in store for us, but I'm hopeful that maybe this is just a period of tearing down and then building back up in a more efficient way. So I mean, yeah, I agree. The best case scenario at this point, yeah. 

Yeah, that was not meant to be a trick question or anything like that. I really like, what are we gonna do? Yeah. You're not alone, I'll tell you. In all, all facets we've heard similar things. But I don't know, like you've had, you've had a very interesting career and you've had kind of, like you say, you've seen a lot of different change come and go, and like the thread of your career has kind of been, you know, human health. Where do you go from here? What's the next step for you beyond, you know, like just teaching? What else are you going to be doing? What are you working on? And still continuing to work on, you know, Federal funding too is something that, that my career has benefited from. Uh, and I have been able to kind of do scientific studies based on that. So I am, you know, kind of transitioning. I just won my last federal funding ended in June. Um, I'm holding out that maybe a couple of the grants that I have in are going to be funded, but that's probably not, not gonna happen. And so there is a transition on that component, you know, not on the teaching side so much, but besides, you know, dealing with the AI and all this stuff, yeah, I can't even imagine. Oh, yeah. But on the research side, you know, it, it really is an opportunity to think about, you know, stepping back and a lot of the data sources that, you know, I've used in the past to kind of reassess, you know, the whole body of work and what it's telling us. You know, a lot of times I think in academia, we get in these modes of, OK, the next grant needs to answer this hypothesis or, you know, address this hypothesis, and this came out of this and just Move forward, forward, forward. 

And a lot of times we don't have an opportunity to kind of just step back and say like, OK, what is this whole body of work telling us? And how can we pull that together to potentially generate, you know, additional insights? And so I'm actually kind of looking forward to doing it, you know, if these, if other grants don't come through, that's kind of my plan, you know, just stepping back, looking, you know. I've always thought that maybe I wanted to write a book. I don't know. That's. It seems like really daunting. Um, I'm very used to writing scientific publications. A book is like, what, but you know, it's just one page at a time, like you say. And if it, if it happens, it'll be great. I'm sure. I have no doubt. It's funny, it's funny you mention that though, because like to me, like, you talk about like looking at the big picture, and I always thought this was very amusing in Nepa, particularly for air quality, you'll have a project and it'll say this one project is, you know, 0.003% of the entire state or county or whatever. Therefore, it has no impacts, right? You have no, no possible impact because it's just so small. And then you look at it and you're like, well, there's 100 of these. And we're all looking at each one individually because it's, you know, done by a different agency at a different, slightly different time. And if you look at the big picture, you know, it's kind of how we got, you get smog in California, everybody, everybody's building something, and they're like, huh, the, the weather, the air quality here sure is bad. I wonder how that happened, you know. 

So like, I love the idea, I love the concept because, you know, California was like, oh, we have to fix this, you know, cause it's not good enough, like what we're doing is not good enough, so. Um, yeah, I'm curious how that all kind of play out for you. Yeah, we'll see, we'll see, but yeah, cumulative impacts. I mean, EPA is still not great at trying to measure those at all, Nipah or otherwise, right? So hopefully maybe one day, it's hard though, it is very hard to even, you know, just from, you know, two different chemicals interacting and looking at, you know, the same. Biological system to try and figure out, you know, the joint effect is, is difficult, so. Yeah, golly, yeah. I mean, there's so many variables, uh, OK, that's my scientist's brain. I know, I I'll go down a rabbit hole with you there, um, but. I do want to keep us on point, so I, we do have a segment we love to call Field Notes where we ask our guests to share memorable moments about doing their jobs. And so we always ask people to send their funny scary or awkward field stories to us at info@vironmentalprofessionalsradio.com. Now, Julia, you mentioned your AAAS fellowship at the State Department. What's the story behind that? Yeah, so when I was finishing up my postdoc at the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences, and that's in um North Carolina, I had two young kids and I really wanted to learn more about climate change and the AAAS offers these fellowships. In DC working in an agency, and I was like, I'm just going to go for this, you know, I'll just apply. I knew they were really hard to get and lo and behold, I got it, and then I did the interviews, so you interview a lot around a lot of different agencies. And the State Department, the office that basically does climate change negotiations at the UN offered me a position and I was like, I can't turn this down. But it was unbelievably scary because I had to like my, my husband was doing a residency. 

Um, could not move with me. I had two young kids, one that was starting kindergarten, another 3rd grade. So I put them in Washington DC schools. And then this job, you know, has a lot of traveling. It's, you know, it's the State Department. And so I was like, I don't know how I'm going to do this, but I'm gonna just try. And so we did it. It worked out. Um, my mom came, other family members came to watch the kids when I had to travel and It was one of the most rewarding experiences that I've had in my career, because it was, you know, to see kind of diplomacy in action, and to see, to work across federal agencies to come up with our position going into negotiations, thinking about all of our different stakeholders was really just an amazing thing to see and to be a part of. And to see the people at the State Department work so hard, and I just was so impressed. With the patriotism, honestly, like it was really, it was really amazing. Wow. So, I mean, like, what was that? I mean, that had to have been, like you say, it's a formative experience, obviously, but like, I guess I'm trying to understand a little bit more like what you were doing. So what, what were you actually, so you're with the State Department, and you're talking to other agencies about what, like what are you actually, like, give me an idea of like a project or something that you guys would work on, because it sounds fascinating. So I was actually put on the biofuels portfolio and so there's this global bioenergy partnership. And so different countries get together and kind of talk about how they think about biofuels, and the US at that time was, had a corn ethanol mandate, and Brazil also had a sugar mandate, sugar cane biofuel mandate, and there were lots of other countries that were kind of starting up biofuels. And so the idea is really, can we come up with metrics, sustainability metrics together? To think about, you know, is there this kind of food fuel trade-off, you know, how do we prevent that? You know, so there were a lot of this, this was 2009, 2010 era. 

So, you know, it's a while back. So this, I don't know if you remember this kind of controversy, but anyway. So yeah, I mean, that, that was kind of what I was doing. And even to get the US position, as you can imagine, EPA and USDA have very different Opinions on what you mean. Department of Energy has very different, like, so, you know, they're getting all those, um, folks together, and it was actually the United States Trade Representative too, had very specific opinions about kind of sustainability metrics when it comes to biofuels. So, yeah, it was just really, really interesting to see all these different opinions and then finally come to kind of like, OK, these are our negotiation points going into this, this forum. Wow, that's, that's very cool. That's a really cool thing. Yeah, I love it. I really do. I'm still just, he brought the kids and left the husband behind like, when did you guys reunite? Like, yes, yes, yes, Alabama, we reunited. And I remember that first night when I arrived, so my husband had already moved to Alabama, and the kids and I arrived. And just being in the same house and going to sleep in the same bed with him, I just remember just feeling so much relief, like. I now have another partner that's helping me with these two kids, and I'm like, we're back together. It's like, yeah, because it was, it was very stressful. It was amazingly rewarding, but yes, it was quite stressful. Yeah, that's, that's the true like conundrum of work life. Balance, you know, that's really, that's really it. A lot of people wouldn't do that. A lot of, I wouldn't make that decision. So kudos to you. Yeah, and it worked out. So I don't know, like I, I think maybe this kind of leads into like our closing here because we'd love to ask questions about like what. Our guests do for fun, because to us it's kind of a great way to see who you are as a person and, you know, we're talking about all this really intense and serious stuff, you know, risk and all these things going on, and I'm like, there has to be something that you do for Zen, like to get yourself, to calm yourself down, and I see like you're interested, you're into beekeeping. And raising goats, and I'm like, I'm like, is that it? Is that the Zen moment for you? or is there something else? or is that it? Well, those are relatively new things that I'm trying. But like, actually, us as a family, we love mountain biking, love hiking. So just actually, honestly, being out in the woods, um, is my zen. Just if I can be out in the woods, I can reset myself. 

And I Like, I, I think that truly is about me, you know, going back to, like, I grew up way out in the woods. And I remember as a child just feeling very comfortable being out in the woods. And not, and like, that's something that again, that I don't, I'm a little bit sad because I don't think a lot of people actually feel that way. And, you know, to me, it's a little sad because it is so, like, it feels so good to me. But yeah, beekeeping and Two goats are new this summer. So it's been really fun. I never thought that I would be interested in beekeeping, but I visited an apiary and, you know, did the whole thing, lifted up the bees, like they're crawling all over. And, and it was just so amazing to just watch them work. And they're so intent on just doing their job. And so it's been a lot of fun. I'm hoping that I, I keep them alive and one goal to be happy, but um we'll see um yeah, next summer. Yeah, you have to check back in. ‘

Let us know. How are the bees doing? Awesome. Well, we are running out of time, so is there anything else you'd like to talk about that we didn't touch on? I don't think so. Thank you again for having me though. Yeah, awesome. Thanks for being here. So where can people get in touch with you? Definitely you can find me on my Virginia Tech website. I do have a LinkedIn as well. I don't, I can't promise that I kept it like really up to date, but um, or check it very often you're there. Email honestly is probably the best, but that's on my Virginia Tech website. There you go. Perfect. Well, thank you, Julia, so much, really enjoyed it. Thank you. That's our show. Thank you, Julia, for joining us today. Please be sure to check us out each and every Friday. Don't forget to subscribe, rate, and review. See you, everybody. Bye!