There is a lot of talk these days about the melding of Indigenous knowledge with Western Science, and I couldn't think of anyone better to get into the weeds (pun intended) on the subject with than Leigh Joseph. Leigh is a member of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) and a working ethnobotanist who does a lot of incredible work bridging the gaps in understanding between western and indigenous knowledge, while also working to re-establish Indigenous food gardens and cultivate crops as th...
Mar 05, 2025•1 hr 23 min•Ep. 29
This is yet another special edition of Undercurrents - instead of sharing and discussing recent science news, articles or studies here, Julia & Ross discuss important recent events regarding funding and the state of science in the US after the first week of the new presidency. Undercurrents is a podcast series from Nerdy About Nature where we discuss recent studies, reports and news from the world of environment, ecology and climate which all impact our understanding of the world and the way...
Jan 31, 2025•1 hr 3 min
We face a variety of critical issues these days that all seem to be culminating at one big crossroads, and the interconnection of them all can make it very difficult to find a way to move forward in a progressive, ethical and decolonial way to create a better future. So how the heck do we do just that? I was joined by Rande Cook and Mark Worthing, two members of Awi'nakola, at their annual Tree of Life Gathering to learn about the values they embody as an NGO and how that determines their method...
Jan 07, 2025•1 hr 24 min
This is a special edition of Undercurrents - instead of sharing and discussing recent news, articles or studies here, Julia & Ross delve into their thoughts and reflections given the results of the recent US Presidential election, and what that means moving forward. Undercurrents is a podcast series from Nerdy About Nature where we discuss recent studies, reports and news from the world of environment, ecology and climate which all impact our understanding of the world and the way we relate ...
Nov 08, 2024•2 hr 33 min
In case you missed it, I took a brief hiatus from your regular programming to run for MLA of the Mid Island - Pacific Rim riding as the Green Party of BC Candidate and whewwww, what a time! After a long campaign period of lots of learnings, I unfortunately wasn't elected...but thats alright with me, I've got other things to focus on and I may revisit it again in the future. After a week and a half of decompressing, I've decided to pop on here and share some thoughts and reflections on the whole ...
Nov 01, 2024•2 hr 43 min
Over the past 40 years, Tla-O-Qui-Aht First Nation has been fighting relentlessly for their traditional unceded territory with the colonial government of BC / Canada so that they can implement a land vision and stewardship model that seeks to benefit society at large, while preserving options and opportunity for their grandchildren. I sat down with Saya Masso, the Lands & Resources Manager for Tla-O-Qui-Aht First Nation, to chat about the origins of their Tribal Parks, trials and tribulation...
Sep 03, 2024•1 hr 24 min•Ep. 27
For the past couple hundred years, buildings and homes in North America have been constructied using virgin timber from the vast forest resources that once stretched across the continent, and when those structures fall out of use, they are typically demolished, sending all of those old high quality timbers to the dump. Yet with that supply of quality oldgrowth timbers virtually non-existent these days, and second growth timbers not quite being of the same caliber, perhaps there's a way we ca...
Jul 10, 2024•1 hr 2 min•Ep. 26
What is economic reconciliation, why is it important, and what does it have to do with protecting lands and empowering communities? I sat down with Michelle Laviolette, the director of Indigenous Banking Strategy at Vancity to break it all down and hear about all the ways that they are working to support and create opportunities for individuals and their communities. They’ve been leading the charge in helping to support indigenous nations to provide banking and investment opportunities, to provi...
Jun 11, 2024•1 hr 6 min•Ep. 25
Forestry is a large part of the culture and economy of the PNW in both the US and Canada, but over a century of poor forest management has led to some of the largest issues we face today from a lack of biodiversity and carbon stores, to ecosystems that are less resilient to drought and forest fires. How can we create healthy communities living amongst healthy forest lands through a thriving forestry industry? Well, simply put - it's by changing the way we do things and learning to value a fo...
May 21, 2024•2 hr 34 min•Ep. 24
Undercurrents is a podcast series from Nerdy About Nature where we discuss recent studies, reports and news from the world of environment, ecology and climate which all impact our understanding of the world and the way we relate to it. In other words, it’s all the unseen things that happen without much notice that impact the direction or flow of our society and the world we all share. This episodes topics: Shifting Heatwaves: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adl1598 The Cost of Bad Win...
Apr 16, 2024•55 min
Undercurrents is a podcast series from Nerdy About Nature where we discuss recent studies, reports and news from the world of environment, ecology and climate which all impact our understanding of the world and the way we relate to it. In other words, it’s all the unseen things that happen without much notice that impact the direction or flow of our society and the world we all share. This episodes topics: Boiling Microplastics: https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.estlett.4c00081 https://www.ne...
Mar 27, 2024•1 hr 24 min
Oo hot goss’ alert! A new leaked map shows that while the top scientists on the Oldgrowth Technical Advisory Committee panel were picking out the best remaining old growth forest to protect in BC, the Ministry of Forests was actively undoing all that work, changing the borders on the deferral areas to include more low productivity forest while making the best forest left in the bioregion available to be logged by industry. You heard that right - government and industry blatantly working in hand ...
Mar 15, 2024•10 min
Undercurrents is a podcast series from Nerdy About Nature where we discuss recent studies, reports and news from the world of environment, ecology and climate which all impact our understanding of the world and the way we relate to it. In other words, it’s all the unseen things that happen without much notice that impact the direction or flow of our society and the world we all share. This episodes topics: Olivine Disintegration - https://bg.copernicus.org/articles/20/4669/2023/bg-20-4669-2023.p...
Mar 05, 2024•1 hr 22 min
Undercurrents is a podcast series from Nerdy About Nature where we discuss recent studies, reports and news from the world of environment, ecology and climate which all impact our understanding of the world and the way we relate to it. In other words, it’s all the unseen things that happen without much notice that impact the direction or flow of our society and the world we all share. This episodes topics: Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Collapse https://www.theguardian.com/environme...
Feb 20, 2024•1 hr 15 min
What the heck is a bioregion, what does that mean and why does it matter? Well, I’ll tell ya, because thinking bioregionally is a key component of recognizing the ground underneath your feet and the role it plays in the broader systems of earth to create a better future for us all. A bioregion is an area of land that is defined by physical properties or boundaries like coastline and mountain ranges that contain a similar mix of biota, or plant and animal species throughout, and interdependent hy...
Feb 13, 2024•5 min
Do you ever stop to think about the dirt under your feet, or in this case the rock, and wonder how it got there? Well the answer is...complicated, but basically billions of years of intense geological and mechanical processes from erosion to volcanism and everything in between. In this episode, I sit down with Pierre Freile, an award-winning geoscientist based in Squamish BC to chat all about how the landscape of North America and the Cascadian Bioregion in particular were formed, from the macro...
Feb 06, 2024•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 23
Undercurrents is a podcast series from Nerdy About Nature where we discuss recent studies, reports and news from the world of environment, ecology and climate which all impact our understanding of the world and the way we relate to it. In other words, it’s all the unseen things that happen without much notice that impact the direction or flow of our society and the world we all share. This episodes topics: Saving Bats - https://thenarwhal.ca/endangered-bats-fake-old-growth-trees/ Plants Evolving...
Jan 30, 2024•1 hr 3 min
Undercurrents is a podcast series from Nerdy About Nature where we discuss recent studies, reports and news from the world of environment, ecology and climate which all impact our understanding of the world and the way we relate to it. In other words, it’s all the unseen things that happen without much notice that impact the direction or flow of our society and the world we all share. This episodes topics: Norway Seabed Exploration: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00088-7 https://doi....
Jan 18, 2024•1 hr 10 min
The first introduction episode to a new podcast series I'm starting here called 'Undercurrents' Every couple of weeks, I'll be connecting with Julia Huggins (PHD, huge nerd) where we'll share interesting articles, studies, and news from the world of environmental science, ecology, climate, and everything in between! The goal here is to be able to provide you all with more consistent, steady educational content to keep you up to date with the science and happenings of today, b...
Jan 14, 2024•14 min•Season 1Ep. 1
At a top level, the lives we live are governed by political systems which control regulations, policy and set enforcements for how we treat each other not only within our human societies, but they can heavily impact the way our societies interact with the grander, more interconnected natural world that we all share. In order to create lasting change for the better in the world today, it ultimately has to happen on a political level to officially set the direction of society…a daunting task, for ...
Dec 19, 2023•1 hr 14 min•Ep. 22
On every surface of every single thing, there are tiny microbial forces at work creating the world we live in. From oily sheens on pond water to streaks of red mud, the evidence of these little microbes is more obvious than you may think - you’ve just gotta know where to look, and what to look for! Back for her third appearance, Julia Huggins takes us deep into the world of everyday microbes to share fun facts all about the life on life on life that surrounds us! We learn about the power these l...
Oct 30, 2023•1 hr 27 min•Ep. 21
Have you ever stopped for a moment to think about where all our food comes from, and how it came to be? Well, if you know anything about ecology and life on this planet, you’d know that a vast majority of all that food either directly or indirectly comes from the work of pollinators. Without them, there would be no fruit, no squash or pumpkins, no berries and jam, no cattle or turkey feed so no meat…they literally are the reason we’re able to eat so much of this deliciousness. So today I’m sitti...
Oct 03, 2023•1 hr 26 min•Ep. 20
Fire is such a hot topic these days - pun intended! Yet we used to have a lot more fire across the landscape than we do today…so whats going on? Fires are a naturally occurring part of a forest ecosystem, and are generally classified as either low-intensity burns (LIBs) or high-intensity burns (HIBs), both of which have different causes and impacts based on different forest types and factors. Since colonization of North America by western societies, a combination of fire suppression and large sc...
Aug 25, 2023•10 min
After a serious of events that left me in need of a new car and long, arduous process of deliberation, I ended up getting a used PHEV, and decided to talk about my thought process here. Instead of going over the details, features, performance of the Rav4 Prime I ended up getting, I wanted to address the larger, more ethical issues associated with getting a car that still uses fossil fuels as gas, in addition to lithium in a battery, in this world we live in plagued by climate change driven impac...
Aug 21, 2023•13 min
You may have heard that being amongst a forest can help calm your nervous system, but did you know that getting your hands dirty can help clear your mind too? This week, I sat down with self-made gardening entrepreneurial creator Jordan Mara to chat all about the mental health benefits and aspects of gardening, and what he aims to do through his project Mind & Soil. Come join us in his glorious backyard garden as it pops off in peak summer to learn all about mental health connections to the ...
Aug 14, 2023•2 hr 40 min
Extinction is a common threat to thousands of species these days as a result of human development, logging, pollution, habitat loss and fragmentation, and the plethora of impacts relative to anthropogenic climate change. In all these cases, the two biggest contributing factors to a species going extinct is habitat loss and limited genetic variation in the population - but what if we applied that same logic to ecosystems? Just some deep thoughts on the hypocrisy of trying to ‘protect’ certain spe...
Jul 30, 2023•6 min
Grasslands are incredibly biodiverse and carbon rich ecosystems that perform numerous ecological functions, yet many of them across Turtle Island have all declined for various reasons, whether that be decades of development, fire suppression, removal of grazing animals, introduction of invasive species and lack of Indigenous stewardship or a combination of them all. Here in coastal Cascadia, our native Oak Meadow Grasslands play an important role within many First Nations cultures and are the mo...
Jul 23, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 18
I'm going to start releasing some of my slightly longer video here in a new series I'm tentatively calling 'Thought Snacks', because that's what they are...not quite a full meal, but just enough to get those wheels turning and reflecting about the world we live in. When it comes to impacts of climate change, wildfire is one of the hottest topics there is days - pun intended! A majority of our forests across Turtle Island have become prone to very violent, catastrophic fires, ...
Jul 16, 2023•3 min
One of the biggest hurdles we face today is reducing our dependence on fossil fuels for energy, which are rampant in just about everything we do and consume on a daily basis. Fortunately, it is possible and we have a roadmap for doing just that, which is the subject of today’s episode where we talk about decarbonizing the energy grid - that’s taking all of our electricity we’re currently using and finding ways to get the same amount from clean, renewable sources instead of from fossil fuels. Wha...
Jun 03, 2023•1 hr 13 min•Ep. 17
A few months ago in the news, you may have heard or seen articles about open net fish farms being removed from BC waters, and thought, “Wow! That’s great!”...and then not done or heard much since then. As you may or may not be aware, fish farms are one of the biggest threats to our at risk and endangered populations of wild Pacific Salmon that travel all over the ocean from down south in Oregon up through BC and into Alaska, and the fight to get these farms fully removed from BC waters is still ...
May 04, 2023•58 min•Ep. 16
