*clapping his hands*
bing pizza bing pizza bing pizza
*stomping his paws*
BING PIZZA BING PIZZA BING PIZZA
*tearing down all his cabinets and shelves and throwing all the pots and pans into a big pile and banging them into a misshapen mess with his fists and heads*
BING PIZZA BING PIZZA BING PIZZA
joey santoro, or as i call him, "mister crime pays", is a botanist who makes videos documenting the incredible biodiversity of plants and fungi which make up the living skin of our world.
they are not snappy algorithm-friendly videos. ten minutes of a thirty min video might be spent looking at the features of a single species of plant. there are lots of quiet moments, in awe of what he is looking at. it's meditative, and it feels like an antidote to precision-optimized attention-economy content. the title lures you in with a cool species which doesn't even appear til halfway in, because it's not about just one plant. it's about the ecosystem and landscape.
this channel is what got us into botany in the first place. every time we watch it, we learn about a cool new plant we had never heard of before. it's taught us to think like a botanist. heres some of our favorite videos:
The Plant Ecology of Sewage and Petrochemical Effluent - Botanizing the Los Angeles River and The Plant Ecology of Concrete, Garbage and Urine - Botanizing A Toilet, walks through Los Angeles and Oakland, showing the diversity of plants (many invasive) which have made a ecological niche for themselves in the urban environment.
The Great Welwitschia mirabilis, about an enormous plant in the fog deserts of namibia which only has two gigantic leaves, and keeps growing them out indefinitely
The Long Lost Candelaria, about a disjunct population of Euphorbia annisyphilitica in the south texas thorn scrub, thought to have been brought there by humans many thousands of years ago
Huon "Pines" & Ancient Rain Forests of Gondwana, a look at a temperate rainforest in Tasmania, an island botanically notable for its relict populations of plants that once grew on Antarctica when the continent had a temperate rainforest climate, similar to the pacific northwest, just a few dozen million years ago.
One of the Coolest Proto-carnivorous Plants in the World, about Roridula, a genus of south african shrubs which has evolved an incredible obligate symbiotic relationship with a species of assassin bug found only on these bushes
WHAT IS A HERBARIUM & WHAT DOES IT DO? (NICE). a peek into the new york botanical garden's herbarium, explaining how herbaria are used by botanists
Low-Profiles of the Flagrant and Marvelous : Parasitaxus usta, about the world's only parasitic conifer plant, part of his series of videos on the incredible plant life of new caledonia
Derrumbes & Landslide Mushrooms of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt, about a rare species of psilocybe mushroom, Psilocybe zapotecorum, which only grows out of vertical exposures from landslides, featuring mycologist Alan Rockefeller
Late Night at the Mushroom Lab - a peek into the lab work of a mycology researcher (also featuring Alan Rockefeller)
Tony Santoro's Guide to Illegal Tree-Planting, a tour of some of his renegade tree plantings in oakland
if you think you don't care about plants, this guy will make you care about plants, you don't even have to try
i wrote a 5 paragraph response to how much i love what this guy does and decided to delete it to make a summary instead:
-This guy rules
-Nature is literally everywhere
-I have been looking for good birds for a long time
-Maybe half of the best birds I've seen have not been in the scenic, preserved wetlands and mountains.
-The other half were near the landfill.
we really love watching people be sincere about stuff they love. this sounds great.