Perhaps our favorite botanist to watch and learn from, Joey Santore offers us a bit of a different spin on the world of botany with his informative and hilarious (often PG-13) YouTube channel. Subscribe for free today! Most important is the Garfield Park Conservatory, which is free and features plants from all over the world. Member Since November 2014. Thats not true. Will: Uh, he has one that says plant milkweed or get fucked. Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't: Created by Joey Santore. Joey Santore holds his cell phone, widescreen-style, in his fingers, one of which is tattooed with a ruler's hash marks. For his part, Santore says that while he understands why the Department of Fish and Wildlife recommends avoiding direct contact with wild animals, he feels there can be extenuating circumstances. You need help! This is Plant Support. The Thick Chicago Accent Guy Addresses the Sad Fate of the Coyote Pup From the Video. Santore, who hails from West Oakland, is YouTube's botany- and profanity-loving phenom by Robert Langellier July 11, 2022 Share This: Botanist Joey Santore. It was funny, going out to California when I moved out there. That's one of mine. Larsen: Which is to say: sometimes what it takes to get us to give a shit about the natural world is a foul-mouthed amateur scientist. By Saturday morning, the clip more than 6 million views and hundreds of thousands retweets and likes. I'm Joey. When autocomplete results are available use up and down arrows to review and enter to select. If you like what we do here, please support our work on an ongoing basis. I mean, I want to get more people excited about it cuz there's a lot of dark shit coming our way and you know, we're going to need this kind of awareness of ourselves and of the world to be able to deal with it. Guy with thick chicago accent helps coyote pup pic.twitter.com/RJB9sqkrxl. Jesse Will interviewed Joey Santore. It appears that he observed a potentially orphaned coyote pup in poor condition so he was trying to obtain this animal and then transfer it to a wildlife rehabilitator., But Monroe says that his approach presents some challenges. Asclepius prostrata, the prostrate milkweed. May 26, 2021 @ 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm. It's just the way it is. Add to that the threat of invasive buffelgrass, which is fast outcompeting this important little weed. About that Chicago accent: He lays it on thick for the camera. You gotta, you gotta peyote, a peyote, a lophophora, whole shit tons of peyotes. Its a way for me to throw a couple jabs at the elements of society that kind of irk me.. Joey sees an integral and resilient piece of an ecosystem. Santore has been throwing shade figuratively and literally in his adopted hometown since moving there in 2006. One was rabies transmission and one was mange. Off the clock, Joey began growing rare conifers from seed. I am trying to find this guy to invite him to Santa Barbara. Many of those unauthorized trees now are more than 30 feet tall. As it happens, the particular species of milkweed that Joey wants to find here in South Texas is especially rare. But if [the video] gets people to smile a little bit, that's cool. Joey: You know, and I kind of like seeing trees. What kind of attention have you been getting in the past week? Apr 29, 2020 - Guerrilla gardener Joey Santore has planted more than 300 trees, encouraging a new appreciation of our habitatand one another. I ended up bringing it to the house I was staying at about 15 miles away and called around for wildlife rescue and the nearest one was about a 2 hour drive south. You knows what Im gonna do, Im gonna take you to a nice rehab facility. Join Outside+ to get Outside magazine, access to exclusive content, 1,000s of training plans, and more. Over the course of 13 years with Union Pacific, he worked his way up to an engineer, reading about the latest updates in the field of botany whenever he could. Now based in Oakland, California, he was in Arizona on a botany trip when I reached him by email. Bosa removed and slammed his helmet on the ground while still on the field. It's everyone from dope growers to amateur science geeks to viewers who just stumbled onto his YouTube. Larsen: In a move akin to an art thief becoming a museum security guard, train-hopping Joey Santore applied for a job with Union Pacific and was hired on as a brakeman. He's gonna, I'm sure he'll return it once he's done. He's just borrowing. 2018-21; 2010-17; 1999-2009; 1990-99; 1983-90; 1978-83; 1974-77; 1972-1973; Drawings. Painted on the side of an eight-story building, the fiery teenager looks determined and unbowed, gazing down at pedestrians and traffic with eyes the size of windscreens. So today I'm going to show you a little project that I've been engaged in for about the past. Santore: I'm getting welcome to Mexico texts, were so close to the border. Touch device users, explore by touch or with swipe gestures. But it's his voice that's the real star of the show. Guerrilla gardener Joey Santore has planted more than 300 trees, encouraging a new appreciation of our habitatand one another. I'm not trying to harass you. The Tribune did confirm his identity in a public records search but agreed not to reveal it. So maybe it'll be okay. Sounds like a cool dude. Check out our Patreon page for more info. Grew these both from seed. I was just in Sonora, Mexico, looking at plants. With Joey Santore. and the majority of the day, we're looking for this rare milkweed Asclepias prostrata. And this is a problem. Joey Santore, 36, never expected to get famous for posting videos about nature. So they kind of enter this wormhole that's talking about a whole universe, of natural life. Take it easy, buddy. Will: When you speak to them in person that accent gets dialed way back down. Luckily, it seems like most of the comments have been from these middle-aged women in the middle of the country who just love seeing this cute pupgetting a bath. And Jesse's with me. To see this whole thing being paraded around as a cute clickbait video kind of bummed me out. What do you hope viewers take away from your channel? By his own estimate, he has planted somewhere between 300 and 400 trees, mostly native and drought-tolerant oaks and cypresses, along medians and in parks. A lot of people [who] find that YouTube page seem really upset to find out that Elwood Blues is not really a botanist. You can follow Joey Santore on his YouTube channel, Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't, or on his instagram and podcast of the same name. and he says that accent as a joke, like it just makes him laugh. But is now just kind of leftover. But also,[coyotes] are heavily persecuted. I thought, "Oh, shit!" Learn more about all the fun to be had across the state at visitmississippi.org. According to the man behind the video Joey Santore, an Oakland-based, self-taught botanist who runs the YouTube channel Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't the pup died two nights after he discovered it in the northern California countryside in June. And that's why he's lovingly bullying it out of the road, just like he did that rattlesnake. Unfortunately when I found her, I was so far out in the middle of nowhere and I didnt really realize how sick she was until later that night when I brought her home, he says. Magazines, Or create a free account to access more articles, 'It Just Kind of Struck Me.' Santore works a day job driving diesel locomotives. But if it gives me a chance to get more people excited about botany and plants and viewing the world outside of this depressing human infrastructure in society that I think is killing so many of us slowly, then I guess its good then I guess the clickbait coyote video served a purpose and its all part of my grandiose plan to get more people interested in science and ecology and I guess, this sounds corny, the natural world in general.. That's one of mine. In his videos, he crosses citizen science with vigilante environmentalism. He exposes the secrets of these botanical misfits to us in his own gleefully peculiar style, and we simply cannot get enough! (Photo by Jesse Will) I called Joey Santore just as he'd returned from a botanizing trip to South Africa. And maybe you have a better likelihood of accepting. don't you dare rattle that fucking thing at me. Thats basically all I do is I look at rare plants, I photograph them, I make notes and then share that information with the general public and make silly botany videos too., "It looked grossly malnourished. He has rather unexpectedly earned a bit of internet fame due to his passion for a far less adrenaline-inducing subject: plants. Much of his audience, no doubt, shares his worldview: in a landscape of American cultural decline, the study of natural sciences and ecological systems are all that make sense right now. Braidwood Dunes is another really good one. We join Santore on a peyote hunt in the South Texas scrublands to try to understand how hes getting so many different kinds of people to geek out on plants. As for the thick Chicago accent which wasnt nearly as pronounced when TIME spoke to him on the phone Santore says that he uses it to try to get people invested in his nature videos. This plant has adapted to lie dormant in its underground rhizome for years until conditions are right. I would be a lot more angry of a person if I didn't have this. He hadn't cooled off by Monday. You got the damn opposite leaves looking at it. This rekindled his love for the sciences, but it wasn't until he found a used astronomy textbook that he really started to get obsessed. He undoubtedly spurred people who'd never heard about milkweed to give a damn about the plant. At certain times of year, especially this time of year, they are often active during the day. I just want to create a more pleasant place to go, he says, and provide some sort of food or benefit to birds, bugs, and shit like that.. First in his backyard in Oakland, and then, as he ran out of space, at the median park close by that became the star of that illegal tree planting video. These are just names Im channeling in the form of an ongoing science project to make the information more captivating because the typical dry and boring delivery you usually see has failed people., [Photos: Baby animals from around the world]. He now works as a freight train driver in Oakland, where he frequently makes trips into the wilderness in search of native plants. My work has appeared in newsprint, magazines, websites, and the missed connections section of Craigslist, where I write personalized notes to drivers who cut me off in traffic. We dont value plants, we dont value habitat, often we dont value each other. Earlier this month, WTTW Channel 11 profiled him (using the name Joey Santore) and though he does have a noticeable Chicago accent, it's not nearly as heavy as what you hear in his nature. It was recently proposed for the Endangered Species list, and is only observed a few dozen times a year in a handful of locations near the Rio Grande. Cirrus Wood is a writer and photographer living in downtown Berkeley. The Landscape Architecture Podcast. I don't know, six or seven years give or take. I don't want to hear that. Might just be cooking up carbs, storing it in that tuber and then going dormant for a while. That's just the funny accent. This is what happens when you dont have any regulations in place to protect the people on the bottom, he says. with a website! Milkweed is a favorite of many botanists because of its critical importance to the endangered monarch butterfly. Gypsum-endemic plants of Southern Utah quell the pain of life in this culturally bleak wasteland., Instead of this myopia, where we view everything through the lens of our own life, botany lets you zoom out and see how the world works and observe these relationships that different organisms have with each other. Earlier this month, WTTW Channel 11 profiled him (using the name Joey Santore) and though he does have a noticeable Chicago accent, its not nearly as heavy as what you hear in his nature videos (or his voice memo to me). It was recently proposed for the Endangered Species list, and is only observed a few dozen times a year in a handful of locations near the Rio Grande. If there's one thing philosophically learning about natural sciences has done for me, it's to tell me that it's all going to be okay." Joey Santore Joey Bosa. As Jesse points out, what makes Joey's videos different from so many of the strangely popular educational personalities found on YouTube, is that we rarely see much of Joey himself. One single rock can tie a person back to the event in which that rock was created, whether it was a volcanic eruption 20 million years ago or the gradual deposition ofsediments in an ocean 400 million years ago. So maybe it'll be okay. This blend of well-informed science, minor lawbreaking, and humorous rants about the ills of society is what draws people to Joey's YouTube channel, as well as his Instagram account, and his podcast. Theyre extremely opportunistic, theyre extremely intelligent animals, so they do whatever they need to do to seek resources. Just imagining the possibilities of like planting something that would get bigger or, you know, dwarf your lifetime and your physical size. But before I did that I decided to give it a flea bath, which was probably a stupid idea in retrospect, since I think it might have just been shocked by it. Joey took matters into his own hands and began slowly replacing the non-native, water-sucking ornamentals the city installed with an assortment of plants he grew himself from seed. My yard now looks a little different from the neighbors next thing you know, it's going to be all milkweed. When it comes to wildlife rehabilitation for coyotes, its extremely challenging for coyote pups, she says. Releasing a coyote pup or a juvenile coyote after rehab as a single animal is not going to achieve a successful outcome.. There's little nuances of social mannerisms that I miss about Chicago, like that voice I channel on the YouTube page. Larsen: This video went viral when Joey posted it back in 2019, but venomous snakes are not his typical beat. But he did link to Crime Pays But Botany Doesnt, the YouTube channel where the clip originated, among a collection of nature videos about plants narrated in that same recognizable Chicago accent. Rainy winter is planting season, giving his seedlings months to take root. I just don't think what you're doing is safe behavior. Learn more about all the adventures to be had across Mississippi at visitmississippi.org. We launched in March2016with our first series, Science of Survival, which was developed in partnership with PRX, distributors of the idolized This American Life and The Moth Radio Hour, among others. Like I just got really excited when I would read about this stuff. Then there are people who got sucked in because of one of those viral videos. Santore: Anyway guys, here we are once again. I want to inspire people to look at the world differently, he says. Larsen: But Joey doesn't see a weed. And especially where we are now as a species with our understanding of science and the world and all this technology that we have. And in particular, that pup being in thinner body condition and being possibly hungry, that wouldnt be unexpected to see it at different times of day or night, she explains. I guess why I talk like that is, one, I want to make the science communication more funny. He says that working as a freight train operator rather than spending his time in school has allowed him to pursue that passion. During an AFC wild-card . Might just be cooking up carbs, storing it in that tuber and then going dormant for a while. Larsen: He was kicked out of military school and got into graffiti and the punk scene. I bet a bunch of illegal tree planting. WARNING: This video includes foul language. Larsen: But you also get the feeling that botany gave him a way to make sense of the world, and of humans' place within it. Santore: Look at that beautiful bastard, not flowering yet may not flower this year at all. Okay. While some scientists bristle at Joey's swearing or his abrasive politics, most professional plant lovers recognize that his approach is having an important impact. Using a stick that does not seem nearly long enough to me, Joey herds the snake out of harm's way as it flicks its tongue ominously, seeming to tolerate -- just barely -- this loud, swearing man trying to save it. Larsen: But Joey's influence goes beyond just getting laypeople to care about the things growing in their neighborhoods. 3 min read. You know, and I just dont want to get bitten. Theophrastus, a Greek philosopher who first studied with Plato and then became a disciple Of course. email me. I want to share themand [talk about] what a tragedy it is that people don't know this stuff is here. I was like, I feel like an ignoramus. Look at that beautiful bastard, not flowering yet may not flower this year at all. FILE - Los Angeles Chargers linebacker Joey Bosa (97) looks on before an NFL football game against the Jacksonville Jaguars on Sept. 25, 2022, in Inglewood, Calif. Bosa took part in 15 snaps . And conditions are tough here, and getting tougher: high heat, poor soil, little rain. content language. I think the video obviously it got a lot of hits I think it touched people in different ways. You can see the full 3 minute video (which includes some post-flea bath footage) on the Caters Clips YouTube Channel, which posted it July 5. Unfortunately, it seems this particular coyote pup may have already had something wrong with it when Santore stumbled upon it. Who is the man behind an accent more commonly associated with a Chicago firehouse than an open expanse of mountains and grassland? He was kicked out of military school and got into graffiti and the punk scene. But she was covered in fleas and ticks and mites and also had some nasal discharge. Listen to me. Everything I know (about nature and botany) I basically learned myself, he said. Oh, what's going on here? Perhaps because the accent (and its attendant colloquialisms) has become such a rarity, when it does turn up in a piece of media, people notice which could be one of the reasons why the coyote video has generated so much attention. This plant has adapted to lie dormant in its underground rhizome for years until conditions are right. We don't know what would happen if it disappeared completely, but Joey says that he doesn't want to find out. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our, Digital But Joey has his own reasons for loving the plant, chiefly its incredible diversity -- there are hundreds of species of milkweed in North America alone -- and unusual flower morphology, laden with abundant nectar and distinctive pollen structures. Especially young, sick or injured wildlife. But I also try to keep [the videos] lighthearted. [laughs] And I had a pang of regret. His priority is making habitats, not only leaves and pretty flowers. I thought you was a gopher snake at first. She had nasal discharge and eye discharge and was just covered in parasites. I would just be going [to school] to learn this stuff rather than get that piece of paper and thats kind of the whole idea behind the Crime Pays But Botany Doesnt thing. He hasn't looked back ever since. To find enough real estate to survive, these prostrata often end up finding their home in the middle of the road. Joey's video from South Texas has some 50,000 views and counting. A few years ago I wrote about the Chicago accent and its near total disappearance from TV and film, though you can still reliably hear it on the radio: WXRTs Marty Lennartz has been doing his Going to the Show with a Regular Guy movie reviews since 1984; like Santore, he has a Chicago accent but its not nearly as thick as the one he uses in character. I'm not trying to harass you. Transcript. We're, we're keeping it civil. Obviously the accents canned, he said. Santore: So I found this astronomy textbook and then was reading it on a train once. And I, my friend's pilfered scooter. Santore: Oh, what's going on here? That was just the revelation then that God, I don't know shit. I have been driving freight trains for, I dunno, the past 15 years. But it ends up just being a very minor part of the day, hunting down this peyote. He has lots of tattoos and no college degree and is known for illegal tree-planting projects. If it gets people to hate coyotes a little less and not demonize them, I'm down with it. JASON HENRY Los Angeles Chargers defensive end Joey Bosa wasn't happy with the officials on Saturday night. But many thrive, and some of his earliest plantings are now impressive specimens. And his science is good., The promised land of Southern Utah where the rednecks dance on cancerous housing developments, the cows (poo) chocolate and Pediocactus sileri grows on nearly barren gypsum hills. Grew these both from seed. Joey Santore Oakland, California Favorite Activities We have since expanded our show and now offer a range of story formats, including interviews with the biggest figures in sports, adventure, and politics, as well as reports from our correspondents in the field. The first steps to learning more is realizing your own ignorance, and then being willing to work beyond that. Although he doesnt have a degree in botany, Santore tells TIME that nature is his true passion. He's on your level. A lot of folks think that coyotes in particular are purely nocturnal or even crepuscular, which is like dawn, dusk, night. Meet the Misanthropic Chicago Italian Who Charmed Twitter, 2020 Chicago magazine / A Chicago Tribune Media Group website, I try to always encourage people to download Wikipedia and, onto their phones as a resource. An ex-punk and former train engineer who is self-taught in the sciences, Joey Santore does not fit the mold of the stereotypical botanist. Anyone who lives in Chicago knows that Tony Santoro is an actual person. But please dont bite me. Joeys a breath of fresh air. Nother payote right there, doing that thing they do, just blendin' in with the gravels that have been deposited over the last, I don't know, 300,000 years by the, uh, meandering channel of the Rio Grand-ee. The Outside Podcast is made possible by our Outside+ members. Every time it feels like an apocalyptic story with this plant. Will: It's a real weird cross section of people that are watching this stuff, it's like people that are propagating weed and they got like maybe a little bit more interested in plants than just weed, you know, they want to know more about it. Here's Joey pointing out a colony of the quarter-sized gray-green buttons in the video he made about the day. It's this squat plant. Hes published 492 videos, and has over a quarter million subscribers. You have to reach almost a critical mass, like a minimum number of coyote pups of similar age in a rehab situation to rear so that way theyre positioned for success when you release. Warning: The video above contains graphic language. The Field Museum is great too. And I, my friend's pilfered scooter. And I have no context for anything outside of it. As his online handle suggests, botany doesnt cover the bills. You can read Jesse's story on Outside Online. But Joey doesn't see a weed. Come on, hey. There's enough cat videos and cute videos with corny narratives. I try to always encourage people to download Wikipedia andiNaturalistonto their phones as a resource. Larsen: Milkweed is a favorite of many botanists because of its critical importance to the endangered monarch butterfly. Despite Santores good intentions, its never a good idea for humans to interact with a wild animal in this way regardless of the situation, Victoria Monroe, the California Department of Fish and Wildlifes Conflict Programs Coordinator says. Santore: Being, uh, important members of the natural ecosystem, you know, you don't want to see them, uh, get, get smacked. I've been breaking relatively unimpactful laws my whole life. We spoke to Santore about his complicated feelings on his newfound fame, how the natural world can be abalm for modern anxieties, and why he plays up his Chicago accent for the camera. It's kind of funny. I don't know why they got to keep grading the road, but you know, you give a man a machine and you tell him, go do this, give him a mower, give him a road grader. As a fellow phyto-obsessive personality, Joey is dedicating most of his spare time to not only understanding plant diversity but also sharing his passion for botany with the world. Add to that the threat of invasive buffelgrass, which is fast outcompeting this important little weed. I called them and they said they could take her and everything, but she had already passed away in the night. All right. You can hit the Explore button [iniNaturalist] and see what grows around you and then just start learning plants by family and genus, which is how they're all grouped together. Whether its oaks or Oaklanders, theres a lack of suitable habitat for many. What is plant systematics? Trees that can hack it without pruning and summer watering. I grew up hearin people talk like dat. Specifically, trees. It was about 2 p.m. and hot out and coyotes, I rarely see them out during the day. He would print out papers to read during downtime on the trains. It looks like a weed. Being, uh, important members of the natural ecosystem, you know, you don't want to see them, uh, get, get smacked. Uh, where you get summer rain. Its like get a side hustle and then use it to fund your pursuit of knowledge in the world and be able to share that with others, he explains. by Joey Santore, a self-taught botanist and producer of Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't YouTube channel, which he describes as "a low-brow, crass approach to plant ecology as muttered by a misanthropic Chicago Italian.". The first steps to learning more is realizingyour own ignorance, and then beingwillingto work beyond that. I buried her in the backyard at the house I was staying at, and then the next day when I was at work, it just kind of struck me.. Per the sponsoring organization, a rendering of the Swedish teen as big as Washingtons face on Mount Rushmore is an effective way to honor and amplify a message of environmental stewardship for a warming planet.