Armando Rosario Lebron
Appearances
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
Spending a lot of time in the rainforest will do that to you, I think. It's one of those things where it's the closest thing to studying like a little alien sometimes. It's just a joy.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
We were putting the hissing roaches across a table so that Gordon's head was going to pop over the table. A few of them kept ending up in his hair, so I was digging hissing roaches out of Gordon Ramsay's hair. That was interesting. Yeah.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
I like to start this with the story of a banana, okay? Imagine a banana begins in Costa Rica and it arrives at a port of entry.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
Potentially billions. Potentially billions. I give people the worst case scenario of what happened, and it was the citrus industry from Florida. What if I told you that 92% of Florida oranges has declined because of a psyllid? Asian citrus psyllid came in, brought in a bacterial infection that infects the trees. devastated the industry and then hurricanes came in and there were other factors.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
But that psyllid was a big, big factor in this.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
We have employees who every day are really worried that they're going to make a misstep. Will I say the wrong thing one day and I will be fired? And this environment of fear is everywhere.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
I mean, what other job like this exists in the world that you can work with your love of bugs, work in these collections that are just world-class, and to have this really important mission where it's keeping the country alive having a great safe food supply, keeping invasive pests out. I mean, it doesn't get any better than this.
Short Wave
The Indicator: American Science Brain Drain
Well, as you can tell, I do a lot of different things. We're losing a lot of expertise in this kind of agricultural entomology I do. My knowledge of the collections we have here, my knowledge of how we operate, we're losing that expertise.