Fruit Love Letters
Episode 9:
The Fig - Mother of all Fruit
Jessamine Starr (00:01):
Fig, I've grappled with assigning words that match your magnitude. I could label you divine, godly as many have. But you are a fruit of the womb, breast shaped and oozing milk upon picking is no symbolicl. mistake. As a flower inverted, your hidden petal's beauty is displayed umbilically. Deep soil nutrients filtered through root, trunk, branch, becoming ever sweeter as the distance lengthens.
And you are in fact, a Keystone species, not only an ecological foundation block for your whole environment, but also the true womb for hundreds of species of wasps.
As a powerhouse of the symbiotic and invisible wheels of life. A very motherly role, indeed, I find you giving even when need isn't recognized. To my surprise, this October, a huge fig tree I know intimately, although leaf barren, continued to push out sweet fruits as if to say, “I see you are hungry. Let me feed you.” A caress I felt only through digestion,I love you.
I'm Jessamine Starr. You are listening to Fruit Love letters.
Jessamine Starr (01:42):
Food for me is a way to express love. I'm a chef in Atlanta and I fold my feelings into the meals I cook for my family, my friends, even strangers. It can be hard for me to say, I love you, but you will know it when I serve you smokey old ribbon salad with burnt cashews. But if I peel you an apple, slice you a persimmon, pick you a mulberry with my stained fingers, then we'll both know it's really serious.
Fruit of course have long been considered symbols of love, even aphrodisiacs. On this show, I'm exploring our love of fruit and what it says about us people.
On this episode, the fig,
The fig is myth sustenance and ecological wonder. For this episode, I wanted to explore each of those aspects of the fig and how they intertwine. the stories blending with the fruit sugar shaped by the trees, strong roots, venerated by wasps and people. I wanted an essence to place the fig’s mythology and biology on equal footing. I called up Mike Shanahan to help me with the task.
Mike Shanahan (03:14):
I'm a British biologist turned writer. I, uh, spent a lot of time studying in rainforests and now spend my time writing and editing about forests and biodiversity and climate change and related issues.
Jessamine Starr (03:29):
Mike wrote a book called Gods, Wasps and Stranglers: The Secret History and Redemptive Future of Fig Trees and his book does just this: it blends fig history, lore and science, painting, a portrait worthy of this fruit that I love.
I'm not really sure where to start with, but I feel the fig is very motherly. And your book really seems to back up those feelings, start by telling me some of the creationism stories that were told in different cultures around the world.
Mike Shanahan (04:09):
Okay, well, the one that many people listening to you will have heard of is the Adam and Eve story and the garden of Eden and the tree of life, which isn't actually described as a fig in the writings, but is assumed by many people to be a fig tree. And there's also a fig tree in that story because it's the tree whose leaves Adam and Eve turned into the first clothes. And this is an interesting story because there are parallel stories in other cultures that also have a fig in the origin and also the making of clothes from fig tree Mithra, a Persian God, had emerged from a rock by a sacred fig tree. And he has said to have dressed himself in the fig leaves also. And there are stories from Africa of an original person, the first hunter, who emerged from a fig tree and made clothes from its bark
Jessamine Starr (05:00):
Creation stories that involve figs really span the globe, each a little different, but also with so many similarities between them.
Mike Shanahan (05:09):
There's a great story from Northern India, about a goddess, a mother goddess called near an entirely who gave the first people their tongues by providing them with the leaves of a kind of fig tree there. And she also gave other fig species to those people as a source of food. One of the other stories that I find very interesting, a creation story is from Kenya where the Kikuyu people have a grove of sacred fig trees in their origin story. They say that the first Kikuyu people, a man and his wife, were told by their God to settle in a certain place where there were lots of F trees. And in that culture, the fig trees are used as places of prayer and a means of connecting to their God. So this is another different story that has parallels with some of the other ones I've mentioned.
Jessamine Starr (05:59):
One reason figs are so ubiquitous in creation stories all around the world is because the fig itself grows in so many places.
Mike Shanahan (06:09):
The common edible fig is now grown in about 70 countries around the world and the wild species or the natural habitat for figs is nowadays it’s most countries. They never made it as far as New Zealand naturally. They didn't make it to Hawaii naturally, but they've been imported there.
There are native wild figs in the Southern United States in Florida that you'll find ficus citrifolia. You'll find figs all across the Caribbean, all across the Amazon, parts of South America. All of Africa has got figs all the way. As far as Japan, China,
Jessamine Starr (06:47):
They primarily grow in tropical climates
Mike Shanahan (06:51):
And the highest diversity of them is on the island of Borneo and New Guinea as well. So that's the sensor diversity. There are hundreds of species there. There's one mountain in Borneo where a botanist found 82 species of figs on a single mountain.
Jessamine Starr (07:08):
Wow. Why do you think there's so many different species or why would there be so many?
Mike Shanahan (07:14):
Well, they've had a long time to do what they're doing. So they've had a long time to speciate and evolve into new forms. And they're also constantly producing large numbers of offsprings so that the figs themselves, an individual fig could have a couple of hundred seeds in it and multiply that across a fig tree that has a million figs and then multiply that by two or three time a year and then multiply that by 80 million years. So they've had a long time to try lots of different ways to roll the dice many times and lots of different varieties have emerged from that.
Jessamine Starr (07:51):
So what makes all these varieties figs?
Mike Shanahan (07:56):
What unites all of these species is the, all of them have this structure called the fig, which is not a fruit. It's actually a hollow ball of flowers. And it is the site where pollinating wasps will go in, enter the fig, lay their eggs, pollinate the flowers, and then emerge to go and pollinate elsewhere.
Jessamine Starr (08:16):
Could you actually explain that whole life cycle in more detail because you're saying it kind of nonchalantly, but it's actually a pretty crazy process.
Mike Shanahan (08:27):
Yeah. So the fig is actually like a ball, a hollow ball. And inside that ball, you have hundreds of flowers, tiny, tiny, tiny flowers. If you tear open a fig, you'll see these funny little structures that don't look anything like a rose or any commonly known flower, but these are indeed flowers and there are male flowers in there and there are female flowers.
Originally, they would've been more of a flat structure that had the flowers open to the elements. But over time, the plant has sort of developed this way of hiding its fig flowers away, ensuring that the seeds are protected, the flowers are protected and that only the right wasp can do the job of pollinating them
Jessamine Starr (09:10):
Figs have developed this very special symbiotic relationship with wasps. Figs need wasps to pollinate them and wasps need the trees to, well I'll let Mike tell you about that.
Mike Shanahan (09:27):
When a fig wasp arrives at a fig, she wants to lay her eggs into, she actually has to force her way in through a tiny hole at the end of the fig. And as she does this, her antenna will be ripped off. Her wings will be ripped off and she'll go into the darkness of the fig and start to lay her eggs. And this is where she will die. This is a one way journey for her. She will lay her eggs into the flowers that are inside the fig, some of those flowers as she does this, she's so pollinating and they will turn into seeds. Some of them, she lays her eggs in and they will turn into offspring, wasps, males and females.
After a couple of weeks, the males and females will emerge inside the fig and they will mate. And then the males will chew their way out of the fig to create a tunnel that the females will then emerge from the males.
Mike Shanahan (10:18):
Don't have wings. Their life is over. So they live and die entirely in the fig. The females pick up some pollen on the way out and off they fly. And they'll go up into the high air above the forests and be carried by the winds. They can travel as much as 160 kilometers, which is 10 times more than any other insect pollinator. And when they get the smell that they're looking for, the chemical signal that sends out by just their kind of fig species they'll drop out of the sky. And then with their little wings, they'll flap towards that scent, they'll find their fig they'll enter it. And the process continues
Jessamine Starr (10:55):
Really their whole life is just pollinating. The fig. It is just leaving from one fig to the other. That is it.
Mike Shanahan (11:03):
Well, it's pollinating the fig, but it's also laying as many as 200 eggs and having huge reproductive success because nobody else is doing what they're doing. So they have a guaranteed place to lay their eggs.
Jessamine Starr (11:16):
Interesting. Is it this same kind of wasp? Like, is it just one variety of wasps or are there many different kinds of wasps depending on the kind of fig,
Mike Shanahan (11:26):
There are many, many kinds of wasps and for a long time, scientists thought that every single fig species had its own single wasp species. And that itself is an extraordinary thing in biology, a very tight mutualistic relationship where both partners depend exactly on each other and cannot survive without each other. In recent years, some studies have shown that some fig trees are actually receiving a couple of species or three species of wasps. And there are occasionally some of the fig wasps that can pollinate one or more fig species, but by and large, it's a pretty similar picture across the tropics.
So you have 800 fig species, you have 800 or so fig wasps species that are the pollinators then just to complicate life even more. You've got a whole bunch of other fig wasps that aren't pollinators. Some of them go inside the fig and are cheats. They go in there and lay their eggs, but don't do any pollination.
Some of them are parasites that will go in there or go from the outside and lay their eggs into the developing eggs of the pollinating wasps and parasitize them. So there's all sorts of crazy biology stories happening within a single fig. There's a lot of sex and violence happening in these, in these structures
Jessamine Starr (12:46):
On my running route, there is a fig tree that produced its summer crop and there were wonderful tasty figs. Then it produced another smaller crop and lost most of its leaves, which I was kind of surprised at the second crop. And now it's nearing winter. It's chilly. It doesn't have any leaves, but I've noticed a third crop coming. I know that those figs won't get ripe for us, cuz it will get too cold. But why do figs continually produce fruit?
Mike Shanahan (13:17):
Well, you see this, especially in the tropics where on any given day in the tropical rainforest, you will find figs of any given fig species they will be there. And the reason for this is that the fig wasp only lives for about two days. So when a fig was for, from her, where she's been developing inside the fig from an egg, she'll come out as an adult and she'll fly off in search of exactly the same species that she has to put her own eggs into and also pollinate. And as she only lives for two days, she has to find one within that area. So there's going to have to be another tree of that species whose figs are not ripe and are not already pollinated. So they're out of synchrony within a species; they're asynchronous within the species and across an area. That means that there's always going to be some that are ready to receive their wasps. And some that have had their wasp depart already and are ready to be dispersed with their seeds in.
Jessamine Starr (14:19):
So I feel like I've eaten quite a few figs in my life and I've never chomped into one and seen, like, a world of wasps inside it. Are they so small that you don't see them? Why haven't I seen any wasps inside? My- I'm sure a lot of people are horrified to think that they're eating a wasps’ home.
Mike Shanahan (14:39):
Yeah. This is a big issue for vegans, especially. There's a lot of concern amongst vegans that they can't eat figs. But the good news is that the figs that we eat, ficus carica, there are various varieties of these things that farmers have developed over thousands of years.
Some of them require wasps to pollinate them, but in those ones, the wasps will depart before we eat the figs, the female wasps will zip off to go and find other figs. And any fig wasps that are left behind will actually be digested by the fig. The plant produces enzymes that break down the protein that's left behind. So there's nothing left there. But most of the varieties that we eat, there are some that do not need the wasps anymore. They can produce ripe figs without being pollinated. So there's no worry there. There's no fig wasps in those things.
Jessamine Starr (15:29):
I know that the fig is a keystone species. Will you talk a little bit about that? Both from the human perspective and then the much broader of course, world perspective, what is a keystone species and how does the fig play part with both humans and just the environment in general,
Mike Shanahan (15:49):
If you imagine the arch of a bridge, there's a keystone. It’s the stone that holds it all together. You take the Keystone out and the bridge will come tumbling down. And this metaphor has been applied to the fig species because if you removed figs from tropical rainforests, the entire ecosystem could collapse. The reason for this is that figs produce their figs, all rounds and feed a huge variety of birds, mammals and other animals in the rainforests. Not only do they keep those animals alive when other fruit is scarce, those animals are the seed disperses of thousands of other plant species. So the figs are really the linchpins of the ecology of a rainforest and this is true in the Amazon, as it is in parts of Africa and parts of Asia and elsewhere. So all across the tropics, especially, fig trees are exceptionally important.
Jessamine Starr (16:43):
Mike says, fig trees have played this role for a very, very long time.
Mike Shanahan (16:50):
They've been doing this for 80 million years. They’ve been doing this since before the giant dinosaurs went extinct and they survived that mass extinction event and have been doing it ever since now. When it comes to us, every single one of us is the descendants of a fig eater. Even if we don't eat figs today, ourselves, we all have fig eating ancestors. We wouldn't be here without the figs.
Uh, ancestry goes back to the time of those dinosaurs. When our ancestors were small rodent-like creatures, they were eating figs. And ever since then, our ancestral line has been populated with fig eating animals, our closest relatives, the gorillas and chimpanzees. They eat figs all year rounds. They wouldn't be doing what they do without them. And then the human line as well. We know that fig eating has been part of our own story.
Jessamine Starr (17:42):
That is maybe an understatement. Humans, even proto humans have used figs for food, medicine, material, inspiration. Some scientists even think figs contributed to developing our modern thumbs.
Mike Shanahan (17:59):
There is a theory that we have developed our manual dexterity through eating figs and using our fingers to test them, to see whether they're ripe or not. We know that chimpanzees can do this. What they do is they'll squeeze the figs and work out which ones are worth plucking. And it means that they don't waste energy on bad figs that aren't ready instead. They'll just choose the ones that are ripe because the soft ones have got more sugar in them.
And we know that our pre human ancestors that lived in the trees were better able to do this than chimps can do it. They had more of an opposable thumb. So there are theories abounding amongst scientists that manual dexterity was aided in part by use of figs as an almost daily food. And also that our big brains have evolved, partly because we've had a steady diet of very high energy figs. And we know this from studies with chimpanzees and other primates.
Jessamine Starr (18:56):
I love this idea that our hands, something that we use every day, perhaps evolved to squeeze the fig, but the figs chimpanzees and other primates are eating are, are not the same figs that we eat, right? Could you talk about the different varieties of fig that grow around the world?
Mike Shanahan (19:17):
Yes. The regular figs that we eat is a fairly standard looking tree, isn't it? It's like a stick with the foliage on top. There are some very interesting other forms. In fact, the figs have got more variety in the way they grow than any other group of plants. Some of them are very small shrubs. Some of them are climbers or creepers. Some of them grow straight up, but produce their figs from the main trunk of the tree on little stalks. So they're presented in a way that is ideal for fruit bats to come along and eat them. Some of them are strangler figs and what they do as they start off life high in the canopy of a rainforest where a seed is deposited by a passing bird or bat or monkey. And then they start to send roots down, causing down the trunk of their host tree and wrapping around it.
Mike Shanahan (20:05):
These roots as they grow down, they split and merge and split and merge again until they create almost like a basket work around the host tree. And this is a stunning thing to see when you're in a rainforest, you see these huge giants of trees that sometimes can outlive the original host tree. So you can actually walk inside and look up and see this hollow tunnel all the way to the top of the canopy. They're quite amazing things. And they have a huge crown or canopy that can have as many as a million figs on it. So these are really massive, massive structures. Sometimes some of the species will continue to send roots down even as they get bigger and bigger. And there is one species of strangler fig found in India and other parts of south Asia, which is called ficus benghalensis also known as the banyan. This tree is a monster as its branches spread out. They send down roots that reach the ground and then thicken. They become columns themselves that can grow as thick as an English Oak tree. So the banyan itself from a distance can look like a forest, but it's actually just one tree, but it could have 3000 or more of these huge pillar roots that grow up to support its branches. And it keeps growing that way. So they're quite phenomenal things.
Jessamine Starr (21:22):
How wide can they grow or how much area can they take up?
Mike Shanahan (21:26):
There's one in south India that is big enough for 20,000 people to stand under.
Jessamine Starr (21:31):
Wow. That is amazing. And then I'm guessing that the canopy that it creates is a million figs. That is a lot of food, but then just all of that area, it's a home to so many species as well up above. Is that right?
Mike Shanahan (21:50):
Yeah. Lots of things live in fig trees and especially in the strangler figs because they have so many little nooks and crannies within their trunks. Um, there are small creatures that live in forests in Asia, nocturnal creatures whose eyes reflect the light of the moon. And so these trees are often called ghost trees or abodes of spirits. So people have said that there are ghosts living in them, but there's an actual biological explanation. It's some nocturnal animals that like to live in them.
Jessamine Starr (22:19):
So they are alive at night because of the nocturnal animals.
Mike Shanahan (22:24):
Yeah. Well in the rainforest, there's no off switch. Life goes on 24. In fact, at nighttime, it can be as noisy as in the daytime sometimes.
Jessamine Starr (22:33):
So these different fig species that you're describing are all their fruit edible to people.
Mike Shanahan (22:39):
Well, I'll just take a step back and say, when we talk about the fig; many people listening will know the fig that you can buy in the grocery store. And that's the edible fig known to say ancestors Ficus Carica. This is just one of about 800 different species of fig trees that you find all around the world. They taste quite different. Some of them are not pleasant at all.
I've tried a lot of them through my work. Some of them you would eat. If you were desperate, if you were trapped on a desert island and needed to, then you would probably think they're pretty good.
And certainly our ancestors who were traveling around the world thousands and thousands of years ago, would've relished them equally. Some of the wild species are okay, actually. Some of them are pretty tasty. Some of them need cooking. Um, there's a huge variety. Of course, some of them have evolved to attract birds, but some of them have evolved to attract mammals as their seed disperses. Those ones are slightly more palatable to my taste anyway. So something that would really like to be eaten by a monkey or a bat is maybe better than something that would really like to be eaten by a bird
t Jessamine Starr (23:48):
Figs, as a family of trees, have developed unique, really beautiful at times, and biologically fascinating ways of growing and propagating and surviving. I'm really into figs for this reason, but there are also individual fig trees that have amazing stories. Could you tell me about one of these?
Mike Shanahan (24:11):
So the Buddha was born into royalty and as he grew up, he started to see suffering in the world and he didn't understand why they should be suffering in the world and why people should become old and decrepit and all of these things. And he went off on a long journey, wandering the world and trying to understand it. He sought the wisdom of local sages and he traveled alone in forests. And then one day he decided that he was going to sit and meditate until he'd come up with some answers. And he chose as his place of meditation, a kind of fig tree that is known today to scientists, Ficus Religiosa. It's a kind of strangler fig, and you find it in India and other parts of south Asia. And the story goes that he sat and meditated under this tree until he achieved enlightenment.
Mike Shanahan (24:57):
So it's called the tree of enlightenment. Then apparently one of the stories says that he then gazed upon it with unlinking eyes for seven days in gratitude. And for a long time after the start of Buddhism, there were no images of the Buddha. There were images of the tree, Buddhist temples had carvings, not of him, but of the tree. And over time, the tree became part of the symbology of Buddhism.
So if you travel now to a Buddhist temple in San Francisco or in Japan, or in Sri Lanka or Australia, in many cases, you will find that they have growing there a fig tree of this species Ficus Religiosa, and cuttings have been taken from special trees in India and elsewhere and transplanted all around the world to different temples, to spread the word of Buddhism, and also to create this physical connection with the Buddha's story.
Jessamine Starr (25:53):
That's really beautiful.
Mike Shanahan (25:56):
One of these trees was apparently sent on a journey from India to Sri Lanka in around about 250 BCE by the emperor of India, Ashoka, who had been by all accounts, a brutal emperor who then became a good man after converting to Buddhism and, and seeing the error of his ways. And the fig tree was put into an amazing vase with a thick gold rim, as thick as an elephant's trunk. And it was sent on a journey with Ashoka's daughter also across the sea. It was treated like royalty itself, and it was presented to the king in Sri Lanka as a gift. And also as a message to say that I'm spreading the word of Buddhism to you and the tree was planted in Sri Lanka.
And according to Sri Lankan stories, the same tree is still alive there today. So that would make it the oldest tree on the planet with a known planting date. Around about 2,200 years old. And it's an amazing thing because it's a huge tree we don't know of course, for sure if it's the original or not, there's an unbroken history and there's a lot of mythology and you know how some tales get exaggerated, but it certainly is a very old tree. And it has an excellent story.
Jessamine Starr (27:14):
I guess there are a lot of fig trees like that with stories because there's kind of an understanding that we should not cut down fig trees, right?
Mike Shanahan (27:23):
It's interesting how all around the world people have developed taboos against chopping down fig trees. And you have stories like this from Guatemala, from Madagascar, from Kenya, from India, from Sri Lanka, from Borneo, even across into the Pacific. So a huge variety of different people independently of have all come up with the same idea. Don't cut down fig trees
And they all associate fig trees with their own cultures in different ways. Some of them say they are holy trees, places where spirits dwell, places where ancestors dwell connections with God, places that connect earth and heaven. So many different stories have emerged surrounding these trees.
And I think there's an ecological basis to this. I think that back in very, very long time ago in the history of all of these people in the cultures, people would've protected these trees as a source of food, a source of good hunting, perhaps in some places and also protected them simply because they're awesome trees.
Mike Shanahan (28:26):
They are awesome to behold. Awesome to look at. You see these things. If you come across one in a forest, it will make you stop and spend time with it. It will force you to do that. In many cases, religions have popped up around these trees and the trees themselves have become the first temples. So there are many different reasons why people have done this.
There is an ecological basis also, and that any society that protected those trees would benefit in huge ways because these trees are like life pumps. They're keeping so much of the surrounding ecology going, feeding the birds, the bats, the monkeys, the other animals that feed on the fallen figs. All of these things make them centerpieces of the local ecology. So the taboo against cutting down fig trees is phenomenally widespread.
Jessamine Starr (29:14):
Does that hold today?
Mike Shanahan (29:16):
Today, it's quite a different story and people are losing these connections with these stories. A lot of development is happening. That means that even traditions that are strongly held, can be overruled by the demand of the dollar or the need to build a road or clear land, to grow crops, et cetera. In some cases, the forest will be cleared, but all that is left is a fig tree.
So there are lots of different approaches that people are taking now to try to overturn some of these things and try to increase forest cover, and protect wild species. And fig trees have got a role to play in all of that as well. As researchers around the world are showing, if you plant fig trees in an area that has been deforested, the fig trees will very quickly start producing figs. And as they do, they'll support the return of birds and monkeys and other mammals, they will support the return of other tree species as those animals disperse their seeds. And so you can encourage and kickstart rainforest regeneration in those places.
So fig trees haven't stopped giving us the benefits yet. We're starting to tap into those benefits more and more as we understand their biology and the roles they can play in helping us to protect biodiversity and restore forests and in doing so help to limit climate change as well.
Jessamine Starr (30:35):
Yeah. I just had no idea that they bring so much with them, that they support so much, much life and can obviously do it so quickly. Every time I eat a fig, it feels very nourishing. I feel like all these ancestral memories that you're talking about, like the importance of them somehow is within that fig. I assume that you like to eat figs too. What is your favorite kind of fig or do you like to eat them?
Mike Shanahan (31:05):
I do like to eat them. I like to eat them fresh. I like to eat them dried. And there are very different styles of dried figs. And it depends where you go to get them. If you get them from a Turkish shop, they're different from, if you get them from a Greek shop, some of them are candied and a little bit sugary. Some of them are naturally sugary so that you don't need anything extra on them.
They're great on a pizza. I love them in many different formats. And like you say, when you eat a fig, there's something special about them. And I think these are the original superfood. They're very rich in sugar. So they're a great source of energy, but they've also got lots of minerals in them. They're high in calcium and potassium and iron. They've also got the highest amount of fiber of any of the commonly eaten fruits. So they're really good for our bodies. And people have known this for a long, long time. Pliny the Elder, back in ancient Roman times was talking about these things as being aural and saying, you know, they make young people strong and they make old people less wrinkly. So there's a lot to be said in eating the figs.
Jessamine Starr (32:07):
A lot to be said in eating figs. Cheers to that. My favorite way of course is fresh from the tree, almost over ripe and warm from the sun. But if the harvest is beyond a few days' consumption, I love to make fig preserves for later. I have these great memories from childhood of my aunt's fig preserves. They were simply whole figs canned in syrup. I would love to just pluck out a soft syrupy fig from the jar and spread it across my butter toast in the morning. It was the most exciting breakfast. Today, I still like to make those preserves, but I found that adding a little bitter to balance out the sweet really makes a complex and delicious jam. So I've started adding strong coffee or black tea to my simple syrup. I really suggest you try it. It is amazing.
Thank you to Mike Shanahan for his vast fig knowledge,
Jessamine Starr (33:11):
You can subscribe to Fruit Love Letters anywhere you get your podcasts, and we'll be back next week with more love letters to fruit. Fruit Love Letters is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Thank you to the Fruit Love Letters’ team: Producer, Irina Zhorov; Audio Editor, Bethany Sands, Researcher, Carlnyn Crosby, and Intern, Indigo Clarkson.
I'd also like to thank Whetstone founder, Steven Satterfield, Whetstone Radio Collective Executive Producer, Celine Glasier; Sound Engineer, Max Kotelchuck; Associate Producer; Quentin Labeau; and Sound Intern, Simon Lavender.
I'm Jessamine Starr. Thanks for listening to Fruit Love Letters. You can learn more about this podcast at whetstoneradio.com. At Instagram and Twitter @Whetstoneradio and subscribe to our YouTube channel, Whetstone Radio Collective for more podcast, video content. You can learn more about all things happening at Whetstone at whetstonemedia.com.