# Mutualisms all the way down

Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/many-minds-510509/mutualisms-all-the-way-down
Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/many-minds-510509/mutualisms-all-the-way-down.md
Podcast: [Many Minds](https://stenobird.com/podcast/many-minds-510509)
Published: 2026-03-11T23:40:00+00:00
Episode link: https://manyminds.libsyn.com/mutualisms-all-the-way-down
Audio file: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/manyminds/Mutualisms-all-the-way-down2.mp3?dest-id=1868261
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JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/many-minds-510509/episodes/mutualisms-all-the-way-down
Duration seconds: 4121

## Resource

No one is an island. We all depend on each other in critical, often tangled ways. And when I say "we" and "each other" I don't just mean humans. Yes, we humans rely on other humans. But we also rely on bees, yeasts, dogs, bacteria, and countless other creatures big and small. These interspecies dependencies—or mutualisms, as biologists call them—have deflected and inflected our history. And there's no doubt they will also inflect our future. My guest today is Dr. Rob Dunn . Rob is Professor of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University, where he studies the creatures and ecologies all around us—in our homes, in our foods, in our belly buttons. He's the author of eight books, including, most recently, The Call of the Honeyguide: What Science Tells Us about How to Live Well with the Rest of Life . This book is the focus of our conversation today. Rob and I talk about the idea of mutualism—in which two or more species benefit each other—and how human life is sustained by mutualisms all the way down. We consider how the benefits of mutualism are measured—whether in terms of biological fitness, or longevity, or pleasure. We talk about the best-documented cases of humans collaborating with other species to find honey or hunt fish. We consider how our liaisons with yeasts have shaped human history—and how we might even say that yeasts domesticated us. We linger on our relationships with dogs and cats and the benefits we get from them, some obvious and some less so. Finally, we talk about what it would mean to more fully embrace our mutualisms, what it would mean to create what Rob calls "a less lonely future." Along the way, Rob and I talk about cheese, worms, and maggots; bread, beer, and honey; face mites and armpits; parasites, inquilines, and commensals; what saue…

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## Transcript

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