Plant biologist Dr Grace Fleming dissects the secret life of seeds. In a conversation covering everything from seed vaults to space seed trials, she examines the mechanisms of seed dormancy and how seeds sense and interact with their environment.

Bio:

Dr Grace Fleming is an Assistant Professor in Plant Biology at Michigan State University in East Lansing. Her work examines the physiological underpinning of seed dormancy and responses to varying environmental conditions, with a high priority placed on identifying and validating genetic and physiological factors contributing to seed longevity in the soil seed bank. Her research on the underlying mechanisms of seed death, viability and germination has applications in diverse areas including crop cultivation, weed management, and gene bank storage.

This conversation is hosted and produced by Catherine Polcz with music by Carl Didur.

Micropaleontologist Dr Francine McCarthy goes deep into the sediments of Crawford Lake, a small and unassuming lake in the Niagara Escarpment town of Milton, Ontario. In 2023, Dr McCarthy led a team that identified Crawford Lake as the best location on earth that captured evidence of human caused planetary change. Endorsed by the Anthropocene Working Group, It was proposed as the best ‘golden spike’ site of the Anthropocene. Dr McCarthy shares how she first encountered the lake, her research on microscopic organisms of the Great Lakes Region, and personal reflections on the Anthropocene.

Bio:

Dr Francine McCarthy is a professor of Earth Sciences at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. She is a micropaleontologist who reconstructs paleoenvironments through careful analysis of small organisms fossilized in lake sediments. Her research has spanned small lake to marine environments and everything in between. She has worked around the world but primarily focuses in the Great Lakes Region of Canada. Her interdisciplinary research has been conducted in collaboration with several geologists, biologists, geographers, and archaeologists from government, university, and the private sector.

This conversation is hosted and produced by Catherine Polcz with Music by Carl Didur.

Micronesian marine botanist and ocean advocate Dr Nicole Yamase meditates on the Pacific with a conversation spanning Hawaiian seaweeds, snorkelling across the Federated States of Micronesia and her submersible expedition to the Mariana trench. She generously shares her cultural perspective as a Micronesian scientist and discusses what lessons she’s learned from the sea.

Bio:

Dr. Nicole Yamase is from the islands of Pohnpei and Chuuk in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM). Although she is from the FSM, she spent parts of her childhood in the Republic of Palau and Saipan in the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands. She obtained her Ph.D. in Marine Biology from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa focusing on the ecophysiology of native Hawaiian macroalgae. Nicole is the Director of Impact for OneReef, a non-profit organization that supports community-led ocean management. Through her job, she works closely with local communities and scientists to define, measure, and communicate impact in a meaningful way that interweaves both science and traditional knowledge.

This conversation is hosted and produced by Catherine Polcz with music by Carl Didur.

Forest ecologist Jen Sanger spends more time in big trees than most. In our conversation, she takes us into another world of canopy of Australia’s tallest trees and into Tasmania’s aptly named Grove of Giants. She shares the story of the evolution of the distinctive Tasmanian flora, the ecology of these special forests and  the summer she helped get 500 community members nearly 100m up into the canopy.

Bio:

Dr Jennifer Sanger is the co-founder for The Tree Projects, a Tasmanian based an environmental outreach organisation which educates people about the worlds most notable trees. She is a passionate forest ecologist and has spent over a decade studying forests and the charismatic plants that inhabit them. She is both an expert tree climber and communicator and passionate advocate for Tasmanian forests.

This conversation is produced by Catherine Polcz with  music by Carl Didur.

Partners in life and work, herbalist Deatra Cohen and reference librarian and researcher Adam Siegel are the authors of the incredible resource Ashkenazi Herbalism. Together they spent years researching little known texts, translating ethnobotanical surveys and cross-referencing cultural databases to unearth lost Ashkenazi plant practices from the pale of settlement region. They share the stories and traditions of a few of their favourite plants along with Deatra’s own journey to plant healing work.

Bio:

Deatra Cohen is a former reference librarian and herbalist who trained with the Berkeley Herbal Center. She also belongs to a clinical herbal collective and is a Master Gardener at the University of California.

Adam Siegel is a research librarian at the University of California, Davis, and a historian of Central and eastern Europe, studying issues around cultural contact and plant knowledge in the region. Adam is also a literary translator, focusing on works in Russian, Czech, German, Croatian, Serbian, French, Italian, Swedish, and Norwegian. In 2014, he was awarded a Literary Translation Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.

This conversation is produced by Catherine Polcz and music by Carl Didur.

Tennessee-based artist Ripley Whiteside creates art as a way to explore and connect to nature, history and speculative ecological futures. In a wide-ranging conversation spanning, contemporary ecological thought, invasive species and an ancient Medieval text—the Augsburg Book of Miracles—the conversation looks at the mysterious constructs of our understanding of nature. His place-based work is inspired by time spent Montreal, North Carolina and his home in Tennessee.

Bio:

Ripley Whiteside was born in 1982 and grew up in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. In 2012 he graduated with an MFA from SUNY-Buffalo, and he received a BFA from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill in 2008. He is a drawer, painter and printmaker, and has participated in solo and group exhibitions in the US and Canada. His work is represented by Red Arrow Gallery in Nashville, and Pierre-François Ouellette Art Contemporain in Montreal. He is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor at Austin Peay State University, and lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

This conversation is produced by Catherine Polcz with music by Carl Didur.

Urban ecologist Manuel Esperon-Rodriguez in conversation with Catherine Polcz. 

He shares his journey from researching plant physiology in the Mexican Veracruz Montane Forests to future-proofing diverse urban forests of Western Sydney. His work is driven by understanding our relationship to the urban environment where people and plants are reliant on one another.

Bio:

Manuel Esperon-Rodriguez is a Sydney-based, Mexican ecologist who studies the effects of climate on plant function in urban ecosystems. He completed his PhD in Eastern Mexico assessing the vulnerability of the lush Veracruz cloud forest to climate change. In 2015 he joined Macquarie University with a project identifying climate refugia and plant migration corridors in Australia. In 2017 he joined the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University where he continues his research on urban forests.

This episode is produced by Catherine Polcz with music by Carl Didur.