Tag Archives: planet

The Amazon is Still Burning: Why Did We Forget It?

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Image Credit: Vinícius Mendonça/Ibama, Image Cropped, CC BY-SA 2.0

If you missed the furore about the fate of the Amazon rainforest earlier this year then you clearly do not have social media or a newspaper subscription. For a few weeks it became the call-to-arms for environmentalists everywhere (unless they were busy doing that whole “what about this other catastrophe” thing). And then the posts dried up, and public attention waned. But whilst the fires aren’t as bad now, they’re still burning, and still threatening both the vast numbers of different species and the indigenous groups that call the Amazon their home. So why has it disappeared from the public consciousness?

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Ecology of the GoT Dragons

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Image Credit: Game of Thrones, 2019

Adam and Sam talk macroecology and that’s pretty much it. How small would these dragons be? It’s very anti-climactic. We’ll do a supplemental later. Also SPOILERS. Though as we were a week behind, there’s some stuff that is currently incorrect re: the current status of the GoT dragons. Spoilers.

04:02 – Everyone’s Favourite Dragons
13:15 – The Ecology of the Dragons
40:13 – Balerion the Big Boi vs. The US Military

And as usual, you can check out last week’s podcast on the physiology of these flappy flaps flaps below.

Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson: Rise of the Planet of the Insects

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Anne-Sverdrup-Thygeson has made it her life's mission to fascinate the world - with insects

Anne-Sverdrup-Thygeson has made it her life’s mission to fascinate the world – with insects (Image Credit: Håkon Sparre, CC BY 2.0, Image Cropped)

The Internet has been set abuzz (pun intended) lately by rumours of the Insect Apocalypse. And whilst the concept itself is depressing, it’s worth smiling at the fact that the public has finally started to take an interest in the ecological plight of a group of animals until recently ignored whenever possible. After all, insects include, wasps, cockroaches, bees and myriad other ‘nasties’.

Professor Anne Sverdrup-Thygeson is one academic/author who has made it her life’s mission to turn people around on insects, which includes her recent Brage Prize nominated book “Terra Insecta”. Sam Perrin and I sat down at the recent Norwegian Ecological Society Conference to ask Anne about why people have an aversion to creepy crawlies, how scientific communication helps in her mission, and whether or not the planet could survive the eradication of the mosquito.

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