Ep. 5 – Lisa Margonelli on the big ideas termites raise about science, technology, and morality

Termite mound photo by Lisa Margonelli
“When I started the book, the working premise of termites was that you could model them with a little robot,” author Lisa Margonelli says. “In a way that goes back to Descartes, who said that animals are soulless automata… What happened was the termites didn’t really act the way they were expected to act once they were in experimental situations… It was a revelation: the termites themselves were individuals.” (Photo by Lisa Margonelli.)

Nobody loves termites. We admire bees and ants for their industry and for their collective decision-making, but, as our guest has written, while parents dress their children in bee costumes and animated ants star in Dreamworks movies, termites are at best crude cartoons on the side of pest control trucks. These bugs are also comparatively unexplored in academic studies. Between 2000 and 2013, about 6000 papers were published about termites. 49 percent were about how to kill them. Despite the fact that termites collectively outweigh humans ten to one, they have lacked a popular writer to bring them to the forefront of public attention. Our guest, Lisa Margonelli, is that writer and champion for the termites.

Lisa Margonelli Photograph
“It was really kind of a revelation: the termites themselves were individuals,” Margonelli says. “To think that there’s a mound of 5 million termites and they’re individuals, that’s kind of a big thing.”

Her new book, Underbug: An Obsessive Tale of Termites and Technology, introduces us to termites and the scientists who study them, so we can see them — and ourselves — in a way we never have before. But this isn’t just a fascinating book about nature’s most underrated bug. What makes this book really special is that it uses termites as a new portal to explore some of the biggest questions we have about technology, power, morality, the nature of science and scientific progress, where we’ve come from, and where we’re going.

Inside a termite mound, photo by Lisa Margonelli
There are at least 3,000 named species of termites. The genus Macrotermes, which is pictured here and found in Africa and south-east Asia, farms and builds its mound around a massive fungus. The maze resembles a giant wriggling brain, with folds and bends that increase the structure’s surface area. “[We] also have a brain that has a distinct architecture,” says Margonelli. “That architecture gives us certain limits to how to think about things without projecting narratives on them. And one of our biggest narratives is that they are little humans in insect suits giving us a demonstration of how life ought to be.” (Photo by Lisa Margonelli.)

A dazzlingly original thinker and storyteller, Ms. Margonelli spent over 10 years obsessively studying these bugs and the scientists who study them. As the author Mary Roach aptly put it: “This book is about termites in the way the Bible is about men with beards. Yes, it takes you into the mounds and inside the bugs, but also deep into the strange labs and pulsing, eclectic minds of the roboticists, geneticists, physicists, and ecologists who try to figure them out. Perhaps best of all, it takes you deep into the brain of Lisa Margonelli, one of our finest writers and most original thinkers.” In addition to her new book, Underbug, Ms. Margonelli is the author of the national bestseller Oil on the Brain: Petroleum’s Long, Strange Trip to Your Tank. She’s also written for The Atlantic, Wired, The New York Times and other publications, and edits the magazine Zocalo Public Square. 

Termites in mound, photo by Lisa Margonelli
A termite mound with the “queen” at the center. “You can’t have a conversations about termites without talking about queens, and yet we know that the termite queen is not a queen,” Margonelli says. “She’s a being that is very confusing to us in many ways but she’s not a queen. It’s really hard for scientists, for humans, to talk without using metaphors.” Margonelli explains how when European naturalists peered into insect hives and termite mounds, they saw the monarchies they knew firsthand. (Photo by Lisa Margonelli.)

Book recommendations:

The Peregrine by J.A. Baker

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

Philosophy of Microbiology by Maureen O’Malley

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