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Life On The Brink episodes
- A MANTA RAY OF HOPE w/ marine biologist & manta conservationist Asia Haines
Welcome to the first of four episodes on ELASMOBRANCHS (rays & sharks)! Over the next month, we've got two full episodes and two little bonus episodes headed your way. We know we only just started out fortnightly schedule but we just can't help ourselves!!
Episode 10 of Life On The Brink is all about the world of the ocean's wanderers: MANTA RAYS!
We're focussing on the reef manta ray, the slightly less massive of the two manta ray species. Our guide through their big blue world is Asia Haines, a manta biologist who works with the citizen-science group Project Manta to understand the manta ray populations along Australia's east coast. She talks about the world's only pink manta ray, why no one has ever seen a manta ray give birth in the wild, and what it's like to swim belly-to-belly with a wild manta ray.
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcastand via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.comFollow Project Manta
on Facebook: facebook.com/ProjectMANTAProduced by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
Theme music by Kyle Morley
Episode Cover Image: Inspector Clouseau, the only pink manta ray in the world. ASIA HAINES.
1 hr 5 min - THE WONDERFUL THING ABOUT TIGERS w/ big cat researcher & statistical ecologist Dr Arjun Gopalaswamy
...is tigers are wonderful things! However we can't verify whether their tops are actually made of rubber nor their bottoms made out of springs.
Episode 9 of Life On The Brink is full of tiger talk and more Tigger from Winnie-the-Pooh references!
Hear how hard it is to count one of the world's most elusive big cats, and how Arjun once came face-to-face with a wild tiger in a 15-minute standoff. This episode is a big one, full of stories, ways anyone can help conserve tigers, and high-brow questions like 'Where did the tiger actually get its stripes?!'.
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcastand via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.comFollow Arjun
on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArjunGswamyProduced by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
Theme music by Kyle Morley
Episode Cover Image: Wild bengal tiger.
1 hr 5 min - HOUSE HUNTING FOR ENDANGERED LIZARDS w/ conservationist & reptile ecologist Holly Bradley
Get ready to meet the cutest most baby-dragon-looking-est lizards we've somehow never heard about before on Episode 8 of Life On The Brink!
Reptiles are so often overlooked in conservation and these cute critters are a perfect example. They live in family groups and make houses out of logs complete with outdoor dunnies. What's not to love?! In the episode, we hear how the incredible Holly Bradley started off in research keeping honey possums warm, moved on to sloth tracking in the Costa Rican jungle, and now is taking on the challenge of relocating entire populations of endangered Western spiny-tailed skinks before new coal mines wipe out their current habitat.
Follow Life On The Brink
On Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcastand via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.comFollow Holly
On Instagram: instagram.com/holly_sydelle/Produced by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
Theme music by Kyle Morley
Episode Cover Image: Western Spiny-Tailed Skink. HOLLY BRADLEY.
58 min - BONUS: Meeting New Zealand's kinkiest kakapo
Welcome to the first Life On The Brink bonus episode!
Launching Life On The Brink has been a very humbling experience. The response we've seen so far blew us away, so we kept pushing weekly episodes out so you could get to know who we are and what this podcast is all about. But we've now kicked into our on-going fortnightly release schedule to maintain the standard we want to keep (and, to be honest, to stop us two from burning out too quickly). But that doesn't mean you won't hear from us in these "off weeks". We'll still be popping up in your feed with bonus episodes like this one, mini-series we have in the works, and major updates to our previous stories.
For today, we have some bonus content from our third episode featuring southern brown kiwis and biodiversity ranger Denis Stojanovic. When editing down the episode, we had to leave a whole raft of Denis' stories on the cutting room floor! A bunch of those stories were about another of New Zealand's strange rare birds starting with 'k': the kakapo. So for this episode, we stitched those cuts back together so you also get to hear his stories about tracking kakapos and meeting the famously kinky kakapo Sirocco!Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Denis
on Flickr: instagram.com/viv.fox
Theme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
15 min - THE MYSTERY OF BUTTERFLY MIGRATION w/ insect conservationist & photographer Shawan Chowdhury
It's time to float like a migrating butterfly for Episode 7 of Life On The Brink!
Insects make up more than 90% of species on this planet, and yet we know so little about them. In this episode, we unravel the complete mysteries of butterfly migration with Ph.D. candidate Shawan Chowdhury. We hear how Shawan fell into the world of butterflies as a student in Bangladesh's capital city Dhaka, how following the butterflies landed him in a world of leeches, and how the guy who failed eight out of 12 classes in 7th Grade went on to study a Ph.D.
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcastand via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.comFind Shawan
on Flickr: flickr.com/people/125106066@N02/on his website: shawanchowdhury.wordpress.com/
Theme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
Episode Album Image: Caterpillar of the common mime swallowtail butterfly. SWAHAN CHOWDHURY.
46 min - LIFE IS A FLYWAY w/ conservation professor & shorebird ecologist Prof. Richard Fuller
Episode 6 is bringing us back-to-back bird episodes woo!!!
This edition of Life On The Brink takes us on the incredible journey of the world’s largest migrating shorebird from Australia all the way to China and features Professor Richard Fuller as our guide. Get ready to learn all about these goofy birds, their marathon journey, their enormous pecs, and how to protect an animal that crosses international borders like it's a competition.
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast/
via our website: www.lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Theme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Gabriel George and Alex Bezzina
59 min - THE ENDANGERED SONGBIRD THAT'S LOSING IT'S SONG w/ bird ecologist & conservationist Dr Ross Crates
Welcome to the world of songbirds for Episode 5!
Episode five of Life On The Brink features the regent honeyeater and Dr Ross Crares. In this episode, we learn about how researchers figured out regent honeyeaters are singing the songs of other species because there aren't enough older mentors for them to learn their own song from, listen to the sounds of young regent honeyeaters singing the songs of other bird species, and hear a brutal assessment on whether or not these birds are going to survive.Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcastand via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.comFollow Dr Ross Crates
on Twitter https://twitter.com/CratesRossTheme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
Episode Cover Image: Regent honeyeater. ROSS CRATES, PhD.
1 hr - TURTLEY OBSESSED w/ ocean activist & marine biologist Melissa Staines
Time to give the big blue some love on Life On The Brink number four!
This is episode four of Life On The Brink featuring the green turtle and marine biologist Melissa Staines. Melissa is a PhD candidate at the University of Queensland who researches the effects of temperature and rainfall on sea turtles with support from the World Wide Fund For Nature in Australia (WWF Aus).In this episode, Melissa talks about a bloody, shark-filled SCUBA-diving incident that pushed her towards studying sea turtles, a day in Papua New Guinea that sounds straight out of a Disney movie, and explains how we figured out it takes sea turtle hatchlings 30 years to return back to lay the first eggs of their own.Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcastand our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.comFollow Melissa Staines
on Instagram instagram.com/melissa.stainesTheme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel GeorgeEpisode Cover Image: Green sea turtle hatchling. MELISSA STAINES.
1 hr - KRAFTY KIWIS w/ adventurer & biodiversity ranger Denis Stojanovic
Installment three of Life On The Brink is here!
This is episode three of Life On The Brink featuring biodiversity ranger Denis Stojanovic and the Haast southern brown kiwi. In this episode we hear what drives someone to ditch a PhD in geology halfway through to go exploring the natural wonders of New Zealand and discover what a biodiversity ranger working on a small, remote population of kiwis does on an average day. We also hear the calls of kiwis in the wild and listen in as Denis heads out on an expedition to track down an elusive little bird named Koa.Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcastand our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.comFollow Dennis Stojanovic
on Instagram instagram.com/viv.foxTheme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George1 hr 6 min - THE LAST TREE-CLIMBING LIONS w/ big cat researcher & filmmaker Dr Alexander Braczkowski
Episode 2 electric boogaloo… well actually TREE CLIMBING LIONS!
On the second episode of Life On The Brink Gabriel and Alex chat to big cat biologist and NatGeo explorer Dr Alexander Braczkowski about the rare lions that spend most of their days up in trees. So get ready to learn about how one of the most iconic species is threatened with extinction, listen to the adorable sounds of lion cubs learning to climb trees, and hear about what goes into being both a conservation scientist and filmmaker.
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcastand our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.comFollow Alex Braczkowski
on Instagram instagram.com/alexbraczkowskicheck out his doco: disneyplus.com/en-gb/movies/tree-climbing-lions/and his website: alexanderbraczkowski.com/Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Angus Bezzina, Gabriel George, and Alex Bezzina
Episode Feature Image: Young lion cub hangs in the branches of a euphorbia tree in Uganda. ALEXANDER BRACZKOWSKI.
52 min
About Life On The Brink
From the publisher's feed
**Next episode Monday 23 March**
What drives someone to track kiwis in the rain, chase lions up trees, or jump on dugongs? And with so many species out there, does it matter if a few of them go the way of the Dodo?
Join Gabriel and Alex talking with incredible conservationists and asking them the big questions: Should we bother saving a population of 400 black cockatoos? Why do all your favourite moments from researching big cats always involve them trying to eat you? How are flightless kiwis so hard to catch?!
Follow the journey behind-the-scenes @lifeonthebrinkpodcast on Instagram