Around the World w/ Indu Chakravarthy

 That kind of makes you start thinking about, you know, what does your education really mean? Like, did it make you a responsible architect in the time and the place that you're chosen to practice? And so I took some time off. I was also Dabbling in classical dance and a bunch of other stuff at the time So I kind of went in and out of wanting to be an architect.

I still call myself a reluctant architect 

Welcome to tangible remnants.  I'm Nakita Reed And this is my show where I explore the interconnectedness of architecture preservation Sustainability race and gender i'm excited that you're here. So let's get into it. 

Welcome back I'm excited to share this week's episode for two reasons.  One is that I've updated my Linktree site with a few scholarships, grants, and events that may be helpful to you or someone you know.  The scholarships include Michael Ford's Hip Hop Architecture Scholarship and the Desiree B. Cooper Memorial Scholarship. 

The Hip Hop Architecture Scholarship awards 2, 500 per year for four years, totaling 10, 000 to a minority high school senior who's been accepted to a four-year college or university to study architecture. The application deadline is coming up Friday, April 14. So be sure to check out the show notes. If interested,  the Desiree B.

Cooper Memorial Scholarship offers four different scholarships to fund the architecture registration exam, the ARE  for those who are eligible to start testing. Scholarships are offered in four different categories, including the Black Women in Architecture Award, the Harrisburg Memorial Award, the D. C.

Memorial Award, and the NOMA Award.  In terms of events, the Baltimore Architecture Foundation Spring Lecture Series kicks off on April 13th, with subsequent lectures on April 20th and May 4th. And the lectures will be in person in Baltimore and registration is required.  And the last bit of news slash events that I'm excited to share with you this week is that I will be keynoting the AIA DC's annual Design DC event on May 3rd.

The theme of the conference this year is the new historic preservation and we'll focus on how architects work in historic buildings and neighborhoods in a way that promotes economic and social welfare for all residents.  all with an eye on sustainability and resilience.  So naturally my keynote will focus on the intersection of architecture, preservation, sustainability, race, and gender. 

I am excited and a little bit scared to be doing my first keynote, but it's going to be a good time. And so I hope you'll be able to register and attend if you'll be in DC on that night.  So be sure to check out all of the show notes and the podcast's Instagram page for more information on any of the items.

I just mentioned. If you haven't followed the podcast on Instagram yet, you can do so at tangible remnants.  And so, scholarship, grants, and events aside, the other reason I'm excited to share this episode with you is because of the person I'm chatting with.  As many of you know, last fall, I had the opportunity to speak on a panel at the annual Green Build Conference in San Francisco.

The panel was called Building Reuse is Climate Action, the Value, and Complexities of Building Reuse for Community, Climate, and Culture.  The panel featured Billy Faircloth of Cairn and Timberlake, Lori Farris of Goody Clancy, Sijing Sanchez of EHDD, and me of Quinn Evans.  So we were one of the sessions in the very last time slot at Greenbuild, and some of the audience members had their luggage with them so they could actually leave straight from our session to go catch their flight. 

One of the audience members who was able to stay and chat a bit longer with us after the session is today's guest. Indu Chakravarthy. I am so grateful she had the time to chat because it felt very much like talking to a kindred spirit. She totally gets the sustainability and preservation connection and I really enjoyed our conversation.

I felt our time together was too short at Green Build, so I invited her to come on the show so we could continue talking and share our paths into the profession.  So characterized by an earnest desire to understand and attempt just about everything, Indu is a creative generalist in the best sense of the phrase. 

With hands-on experience in a wide range of arts and processes, she is passionate about seeking joy and beauty in the world.  This pursuit has helped cultivate her perspective that there are many ways of being and a multitude of right answers.  Her experiences push her to be more judicious and responsible in her use of resources and to communicate with more empathy. 

Sustainability is of paramount importance in her work. Fueled by decaf, bad puns, and Bollywood, she uses her various multi-hyphenate, oxymoric ways of being to chase the pipe dream of a human-scaled, equitable, joyful, playful, wonderful, multimodal, transit-oriented, urban, zero net carbon built environment. 

So clearly, And do as our kind of people.  This episode will take us around the world and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. So without further ado, please enjoy this conversation between me and Indu Chakravarthy.

I'm really excited that we are connecting again, particularly since we met at Greenville. I guess it was last year, a couple months ago, not even. So thank you so much for coming on to the show.  It was wonderful to attend that session. I think it was the last session at GreenBuild and it was talking about how building reuse is climate action.

And I was like, I can't believe it's like been 15 years since I first started talking about this. And, you know, we're still kind of talking about this, like it's a new thing, right? And it's unfortunate, but as, as all the presentations evolved, I was just. Kind of delighted because I feel that these conversations are iterative and you have the same conversations with more information and different tools constantly.

And so that evolution is exciting to see. Right. Yeah, I definitely feel at times like a broken record because I'm like, we're still talking about this. This is not new. I mean, even back in the 70s and they're talking about reusing historic buildings during like the gas crisis and all that sort of stuff.

It's, you know, we're just going to keep talking about it and then it'll be like an overnight success when all of a sudden people are like, oh my gosh, this new thing is so amazing. Kind of like what's happening now with the AIA putting out that like architectural buildings are like 50 percent in adaptive reuse and existing buildings.

And it's like, well, yeah, of course, about time.  So the very first kind of document that I found when I was in grad school was a paper called energy conservation benefits of historic preservation methods and examples. And this was put out by the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation in January, 1979.

I was like a wee little baby, not even. 

Amazing. Amazing. Well, why don't we take a step back and why don't you talk a little bit about your journey into the field and where you went to school and all that good stuff? I grew up in India, in the Western part of India, in the state of Gujarat. And this is about a hundred miles from one of the most prominent architecture schools in the country, which was started by B.

V. Doshi, who won the Pritzker a couple of years ago. He's the only Indian architect who won the Pritzker prize, I think.  I grew up.  Adjacent to a university campus with a very famous art school in it. So there was always the sense of how the world is made up of many strains of thought somehow, like being around a university gives you that sense when you're a young child.

So I ended up approaching architecture school because I felt like it was a specialization where you would be really good if you were a generalist.  So I kind of had the sense that if you knew a little bit of.  Or, or a lot of many things, then architecture was the place where, you know, you could create a frame around all that knowledge and make it valuable to what we're trying to do.

So that's kind of how I ended up trying to, you know, be an architect undergrad. And then I went through this five-year professional program that allows you to be licensed in India. And then immediately after I graduated, I ended up taking a step back because. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. Like during my program, I had interned at  an architect's office who did like really cool stuff with terracotta blocks and, you know, just the vocabulary of creating something very modern with very earthy materials and, you know, just kind of something really different from, from what is like the international style.

So I had explored all of that, but I kind of found that. What it meant to be an architect was very aesthetically driven and a little bit elite, you know, it was like, right. It was problem-solving, but it was problem-solving for someone who could identify. That they need to pay you a fee to solve their problem.

And part of that solution involves boosting their vanity in your vanity.  So kind of that, that's what it ended up looking like when I looked at architectural practice as a, as a young graduate.  And this was also the time when like my brain was exploding. I was observing life around me. And if you grow up in India, you can become. 

Sort of in your to,  you know, the, the economic and social inequity around you, but it's just there all the time to be seen. And you, if you're even a little bit sensitive, you, you realize the costs of every act of yours, right? Like, who are you supporting? What are you buying? What are you specifying? And, and, and how is that creating, you know, employment for somebody or not creating employment for somebody.

So there's, there's this.  Thing that you have to understand whether you like it or not. And so when I started to understand like the life cycles of materials and the techniques that, that we, we were going to use, like if you did an interior job, it was just, you were going to buy flyboard, you were going to get laminate and, you know, someone's going to slap it on and, and, and make something.

As opposed to someone who knew how to actually work with wood that was native to that part of the country and build something. And in India, this is more of a  reality 20 or 25 years ago, because you still have. Both these markets thriving simultaneously. I haven't practiced there for a while, so I don't know what it's like now.

And I suspect that some of this is still true, but that kind of makes you start thinking about, you know, what does your education really mean? Like, did it make you. A responsible architect in the time and the place that you're chosen to practice. And so I took some time off. I was also dabbling in classical dance and a bunch of other stuff at the time.

So I kind of went in and out of wanting to be an architect. I still call myself a reluctant architect. So I kind of came to the conclusion at that time that doing almost anything makes you a better architect than working in an architect's office, because what you learn in an architect's office. Is how to make construction documents, how to build something, you know, details,  how not to be liable and then how to get a permit.

And all of these are very valuable skills. And, you know, this is the bread and butter of architecture, but sometimes the thought of why you're doing something or the awareness or the impulse. Gets diluted or doesn't get a chance to be expressed in like this entire process that you're going through in order to, you know, do your work as an architect.

So like the idea of wanting to shape a better-built environment or save the world, if you were, if you will, through design and all of that, is that more what you mean? Yes, that's kind of what I mean. And also just being sensitive to your own impact in the profession. You know, of course, if you're working in the profession, it means that you are having an impact.

Just by doing the work, but if you want to be thoughtful and you want to train yourself or educate yourself, that's always extra effort. And not all of us have the ability to do both things while we're working. And when I was a young person, I was like, okay, I'm not going to work for a while. And I'm going to go out and study these things.

And then I somehow decided that I hadn't seen enough of the world and I, I didn't have the opportunity to figure out what I needed to figure out about architecture where I had grown up. So I started applying to graduate school all over and the university of Arizona was kind enough to give me a scholarship.

And I picked Arizona because it was hot, dry, just like the place where I had grown up, you know, I didn't think that. Trying or learning to design a high-performance building in Vermont was going to cut it for that. It's a totally different thing.  So, yeah, so, so I ended up in Tucson, Arizona in grad school.

I, I, you know, did all the coursework for the design and energy conservation track. We have the most amazing head for the preservation track and he agreed to let me do the preservation coursework as well. So I did that as well. And so I ended up studying both things in Arizona. And that's how I came to this conversation about how preservation and sustainability are essentially two faces of the same impulse. 

I love it. And clearly, for listeners who have listened to the podcast for any amount of time, you know that I am so aligned with Indu on that, that statement. And so when we met at Green Build, it was, I know, it's kindred spirits being able to be like, Oh yeah, this is a familiar conversation. It's not new.

We've been talking about this for a long time. And that's really one of the reasons why I wanted to make sure that we could connect. Because I also was excited to hear about your experience also as an Indian architect and your comment about needing to see more of the world totally resonated with me because I ended up actually spending some time in India for a friend's wedding and we went and went around went to the typical architecture sites you would expect to go to.

But it was also one of those things where that was world-shifting for me to see.  The different levels of, different levels of poverty, different levels of access, different levels of the haves and the have-nots, and just kind of different access to everything. And then even just culturally what it's like to be an American in India, to be a Black person in India, and then to be an architect in India, like it was fascinating.

And we were in New Delhi, and then also Agra for a little bit. But it was just like the, the different perspectives, and it's, I left feeling like, There's more things that are the same than different and how everyone, regardless of where you are in the world, they're trying to survive and thrive with the resources that they have, but it's still not all equally distributed. 

So anyways, that's, I totally love that you came to Arizona.  And how are the, are the climates that similar?  It's just less humid in Arizona than it is in Western India, where I grew up, but kind of to go back to where that impulse came from, you know, the sustainability and preservation thing. It wasn't clear to me, like I  understood the environmental problem before I understood the social problem, right?

I kind of understood that we have a finite amount of time to address climate change and.  There's all of the stuff that we need to do in order to even try that. And, and at that time, the focus was very much about like resource use and energy use. And now I also understand that, you know, we're a very young planet.

We have different standards for what it means to live well across the planet. And all of these kinds of social changes have happened, which puts in a way more pressure, but in a way less pressure, because we're all like more aligned possibly for the good outcome that we desire. I wasn't sure if.  The solution to the problem was in the future.

Like somehow we'd have some great technological innovation. We'd make like high-performing buildings and we'd figure out how much energy they use before we built them. And we just kind of where we are, you know, 15 years later, we'd have to go back and solve the problem from history, right? Like, because.

We had all been subsistence communities, we'd all learn to shelter and grow food, no matter what geography we're in, you know, whether you're in Scandinavia or you're in sub-Saharan Africa, there is a type of cuisine, a way of building your house, a way of dressing yourself that works for those climates that relies on the resources kind of immediately available to you.

And so I kind of, you know, I wasn't sure about which approach was going to get us out of this mess. And I wanted to hedge my bets about what to study.  Yeah. Amazing. So then what kept you stateside? I didn't actually stay here. So right after my time at graduate school, I moved back to India to work in heritage policy for a bit.

So the city of Bangalore was exploding into a megapolis and it was, you know, over 10 million people in the city and very quickly losing its built heritage and cultural heritage. A lot of, lot of massive urban transformation. And so there was a, a nonprofit that wanted to do a pilot on how we could have a heritage policy for the city.

And I ended up working with them. For about a year during that time I decided to marry my then-boyfriend now husband and he was in the Netherlands. So I moved to the Netherlands for a few years and kind of got to live in what I had imagined was the ideal situations that I would. Advocate for in the built environment, right?

Like lesser use of automobiles, like very playful urban places are very pedestrian and bike-friendly, a huge emphasis on preservation of cultural resources and the way that they did it, you know, with like salvage and reuse and, and materials banks and all that kind of stuff, and then also they're really great engineers along with being really great preservationists.

So sort of this. Cutting edge, uh,  you know, preserving a 16th-century pack house, but it has like geothermal heating and solar water heating and like, um,  you know, wind-generated electricity and all of that kind of stuff. So it was a great sort of learning lab for me, you know, just to observe these things and kind of have the confidence that what I was hoping for was not a pipe dream that, that somebody was trying this out.

I could see it, I could learn from it, and I could potentially apply it in future work, so. I came back to the U. S. when we moved to the Bay Area about 10 years ago. Awesome. And then that, that also marked my return to, like, working in mainstream architecture. The contrast between living in the Netherlands and then, I assume, living in California.

So, I'm in Maryland, but I, from what I've observed from  California, It seems to be a little bit more progressive forward thinking, a little bit more sustainable than other parts of the US, a little, a little bit more pedestrian friendly, some in some locations. I like to think that we have a long way to go.

I mean, San Jose has a Vision Zero plan because we lose like between 50 and 60 people a year to bike and pedestrian accidents just in the city. So yeah, we have a long way to go. But I think there's some aspiration there. Yes, absolutely. And I feel like I remember there was So even for California, I know in the state, there's, you guys are trying to ban being able to put gas stoves in residences, something simple like that.

Remember, I brought that up to a developer I was working with in Maryland, and they were like, no, absolutely not. People, and homeowners love gas stoves, we absolutely need to do those instead of induction. And you know, I went back and forth on him, trying to convince him of the, both the sustainability aspects, energy aspects, whatever, but there was still this, Fixed mindset of, no, it has to be gas because that's what homeowners want.

And so I remember just, and when I brought up California, they were like, Oh, but California is like a different country. I was like, come on. But California is, you know, also very diverse. And so here, here, the conversation takes on maybe a slightly different color. And so for instance, you know, I'm Indian, I know other Asian folks, like there's this idea of what.

A high-intensity flame can do to your food, right? Right. Like for instance, if you're Indian and Northern Indian, you eat chapatis a lot and chapatis are required to be puffed on a gas flame. So I am somebody who lived for eight years without a gas stove. And I figured out ways of making chapatis on an induction cooktop, just because I wanted to prove to myself that I could make really great Indian food without burning fossil fuels in my house. 

So, you know, some of this thing is like. Some things you do professionally, but some things you have to engage with and confirm in your personal life, right? Before you ask someone else to make that shift, like you have to know that it's a reasonable shift to make, like you don't want someone to lose their.

Cultural heritage or their way of eating or their way of, you know, being comfortable in their own home. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I was and I was fortunate enough. So because our house we had converted to an induction top. So, you know, it's been probably 12 years now and it's like I love it and I don't see a cooking difference, but that I haven't thought about in terms of, you know, if you're trying to make that particular type of food or even I know I have some Asian friends where they use walks and that sort of thing where it's like.

a different type of heating situations. That's fair.  But as a woman, as a woman, I think induction cooktops are a game changer. Why? Because you can set the temperature of something. You can set the time of something and you can walk away. The part of cooking where you have to stand in front of the stove and do something has been eliminated.

And so, yay.  Yes, and I love it also because I don't have to smell gas. Like I can walk into most places and be like, Oh, this is gas appliances right when I walk in the door because you can smell it. And so I really appreciate induction not having. That issue. So anyway, we've digressed a little bit, but that's fine.

It's what we do. We're kindred like that too. Exactly.  Exactly. I love that induction starts with Indu. Let me put it that way.  See a marketing opportunity.  That's amazing.  So then in terms of sustainability and preservation, and so I know before, before we record, you were chatting about How sometimes the bureaucracy between both of the fields can get in the way of the fields working together.

What are some of the experiences or thoughts that you have on that? Any change that you want in the built environment, right, has to come from the intention to change something. And the intention to change something comes from the awareness of what you need to  And there is something that the preservation Of the built environment or, you know, cultural artifacts brings to the conversation about sustainability because you can observe something right?

Like there is the gift of perspective that you get, for instance, you can try and convince somebody to drive a clean air vehicle and then give them all this data about, you know, what smog does or what doesn't do. And then there's like the one day that you show up at the Grand Canyon and let's say you can't see the canyon because the air quality was terrible or there was a wildfire or like, you know, or let's say you can talk about water conservation and you can talk about water pollution.

And then as, as a, as an Indian person, like the holy dip in the, in the Ganges river is, is supposed to be one of them. The defining things that allow you to reset your Sidney, you know, like that's, that's how you wash away your sins and Hindu mythology. So if you go to the Ganga river and you realize that there's no water, or let's say the water is so polluted that you can't do that, then, then it gives you an emotional trigger to change something very quote-unquote rational. 

And so there is like that, you know, the. Preservation is, is your connection with history. It's, it's your connection with past time. And it's the, it's the only mechanism that allows you to still observe the remnants of past time. And so that's, I think, one of the major things that the bureaucracy sort of acknowledges because that's the reason it exists.

But  It does, it tells you in, in terms of like a statement of significance or something like that, but there's no marketing of what that significance means, right? For instance, like, uh, the preservation of pre-modern buildings tell you what materials and what climate-responsive techniques people built with.

This is not so obvious. When we're talking about modern buildings or buildings that were built after the invention of HVAC systems and buildings, but there's, there's that whole thing that you can gain in terms of precedent as an architect, when you observe a pre-modern building and how it was built and how big it was built or how it was geared in other ways. 

So there's all of this education that you can get. In sustainability in in modern building from observing things. And then, of course, you know, preservation gets a shot in the arm from the sustainability movement, because we're all talking imported carbon. We're all talking life cycle assessment. We're all talking about these things where, you know, reusing existing buildings makes for a greener built environment. 

Bureaucracy and preservation might do well to expand some of its vocabulary, um, in terms of how significance is defined, because I think we kind of sometimes get too fixated on a structure or where it's located or how it's configured or who used it. And, and we, like, especially if it's in an urban area or an infill area, and like, if someone wants to build.

A high rise with like a bit of that facade preserved as opposed to retaining the whole thing. I feel like some flexibility is required in order to solve the climate crisis and kind of not index too heavily on a kind of pure thought or sentiment. driven type of preservation. I feel like it needs to become a little more pragmatic in that sense. 

The sustainability bureaucracy could talk less numbers and more emotions sometimes, I think. Yeah. And I think that's huge. And so from both the preservation side, there's been, there's often a very heavy focus on the architectural significance as opposed to All of the other elements that make up integrity.

So there's like seven different elements that makeup integrity,  particularly in urban environments where we know that because of systemic racism because of disinvestment because of purposeful neglect, there are a lot of places that have a historical significance, but they don't have architectural significance, but there's still a level of preservation or rehabilitation that could occur there. 

Right. So definitely need to expand how we're looking at it from a preservation standpoint in terms of what's worthy to be preserved. This isn't to say that everything should be preserved or kept as is or static because preservation is not about keeping things the same. It's like, you know,  sensitively managing change and all that.

Right. But I think for, I agree with you completely about the sustainability side of it, because so often, We disconnect the emotion and the real need to make change behavioral changes specifically from day-to-day. I remember I was interviewing or no, I was actually I was speaking on a panel at like a leadership greater Washington sort of thing where we're talking about sustainability and I was talking about recycling and using and all that.

And there was this conversation where someone a black male stood up was like, you know, well, lower-income people don't care about sustainability. They care about surviving. And, but I was like, yes, but you know, we're, we're using things, black people, people of color. Lower-income people have to reuse things out of necessity, whereas affluent people can recycle out of convenience and feel good kind of thing.

And so it's explaining how, you know, we're using the mason jars, we're using our bags, we're using all the things, that's also sustainability. But it's like, it's the framing of it, it's the optics of sustainability that we don't often, the bureaucracy doesn't always connect to. So even kind of seeing, you know, lower-income people air drying their clothes.

is seen as poverty as opposed to sustainability because you're letting your clothes air dry and not using a dryer. So it's kind of how do the optics of sustainability, how do we expand it so we're not just talking about the numbers and we are actually talking about the day to day of how people are living and the emotional impact.

Like that's, I love that point.  Yeah. Yeah. And, and that happens, you know, whether you're talking about the built environment, whether you're talking about the restaurant industry and food, whether you're talking about fashion, you know, these, these aspects come into play everywhere. Like millets were supposed to be the food of poorer people when I was growing up.

That's what I heard in my family. And then now millets are like the healthy thing to eat. Yeah. Like millet bread and all that stuff. Right. Yeah, exactly. So these are the changes that happen. And then sometimes what ends up happening is when it gets fashionable and. Richer people start to buy that food.

Then it prices out for people who said it was supposed to be to begin with. So like, you never know whether you're solving a problem or causing a new problem and live and learn. Right. Exactly. And it's, that's interesting because I would, the, my first exposure to millet was millet bread and it was like, wow, this is some expensive bread.

All right.  It's like, that's fascinating. All right. Things that are exciting for me right now is just the conversations that I'm getting to have. I think there is Um, an openness to building reuse in certain parts of the country in certain parts of the world that wasn't there before because of inflation and the high placement cost of buildings.

People are willing to look at Reuse also the way that our, you know, understood users or occupancy types are having to shift because of the pandemic and how, you know, we have remote work and hybrid work and a housing shortage and, you know, all of these different problems kind of making the perfect storm for building used to become a viable stylistic option for people, because I think in some ways they were always a financial option, but Yeah.

You know, the reason why we want to create new spaces or revamp spaces is because they're not serving some functional or aesthetic use for us. And, and I don't think we change spaces functionally as much as we think we do. You know, like a tenant improvement in a, in a commercial office building is ripping out one furniture and color scheme and replacing it with another that's marginally different from it.

Not to, not to. You know, be lacking in empathy for the design process. It creates something that creates a wonderful atmosphere for the people who are trying to use it. But if you're thinking about really how much changed, I think we're looking at greater opportunities for change right now. And then we have the technology tools to sort of.

quantify what that means in terms of carbon, in terms of money, it's exciting that in addition to like all of the sustainability and wellness standards that we had in the built environment, we also now have all of these standards for real estate portfolios and all the carbon declarations that people have to make.

So I feel like there's. An incentive for money to move in the right direction. And for people who have good intentions to harness the power of that, to do better things in the built environments. That's, that's something that's extremely exciting. I feel like the DEI conversation entering the architecture profession,  you know, in a, in a louder way is, is very exciting because it allows us to have complicated conversations without feeling bad about having complicated conversations, no matter which side of.

A debate group because we now all have the language to discuss these things without upsetting each other. I know I say this with a lot of optimism because, you know, social media is full of Twitter fights and Instagram things and whatever but I feel like it's a better place when you can acknowledge something and you can talk about it being a problem.

You're one step closer to solving it. Exactly. And it's like, it's amazing how much just acknowledging could would get us so much further. I mean, I feel like we're finally getting there as well. Even with like the sustainability conversation, there's a little, it seems like there's a little bit less of the climate-denying.

It's not a problem kind of thing, but like just acknowledging. What's real. So we can actually talk to solutions and ways to move forward. That's huge. So yeah, I agree. It's being able to have the conversations has well, hopefully, I'm optimistic with you, you are moving in the right direction. And I think the nicest.

Tool that we, or the nicest muscle that we may have inadvertently developed during the pandemic is empathy, right? Like, I feel like being professional meant kind of putting on this uniform, this, this kind of weird, fuzzy. Notion of what it meant to be a professional, whether it was, you know, how you wore your hair or what clothes you wore and just showing up and doing this sort of fee defined thing in a slightly emotionless way and just being remote and, and being able to see what people are like in their spaces and their pets and their plants and their children, and you know, what they look like when they're not kind of showing up at work is, is empathy generating, you know, yeah, you kind of feel like, I think everybody's being more open about.

who they are and bringing to how they work and I think it makes for better work in general. Absolutely, because it's like it has allowed us to be a little bit more authentic because we didn't have to pretend like, nope, I don't have this other life outside of work. I'm always on. 

So we do have a lot of student listeners. So any, any words of wisdom or tips for them? Yes. Be greedy. Be really, really greedy about everything you want to learn and be greedy about the scale of problem you want to solve, because you may not find a solution right now or within the timeframe of your course or quarter or, or even your degree or even, you know, the first few years of your professional life or whatever.

But. If you bite off a substantial enough or interesting enough problem, it'll keep your life interesting. There's no reason to not think about that when you're young and starting out in the profession.  I love that. I love that. Be greedy. That's what you want to learn. I love it.  Amazing. 

Thank you so much for listening. Links to amazing resources can be found in the episode show notes.  Special thank you to Sarah Gilbert for letting me use snippets from her song Fireflies. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts.  And now that Tangible Remnants is part of the Gabl Media Network, you can listen and subscribe to all the network partner content at gablmedia. 

com.  That's G A B L media. com.  Until next time. Remember that historic preservation is a present conversation with our past about our future. We don't inherit the earth from our parents, but we borrow it from our children. So let's make sure we're telling an inclusive history.  I saw the first firefighter, 

right?  I thought of you.  Oh, I could see us catching them and setting them free.  Honey, that's what you do. 

Ooh,  that's what you do to me.