Life On The Brink
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© Gabriel George & Alex Bezzina
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**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
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
22 Episodes
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What a title hey?
Apologies for this episode being a few days late, we're both still getting a handle on keeping this podcast running while now working full-time!
But enough of that, it's time for Episode 18! Our guest on this episode, Dr Emily Roycroft, was supposed to be studying the family tree of eight species of extinct Australian rodents. She then realised one wasn't actually extinct. Listen in to hear that story, and whether this mouse will go extinct for the SECOND time.
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Emil
on Twitter: twitter.com/emily_roycroft
Produced by Gabriel George & Alex Bezzina
Theme music by Kyle Morley
Episode Cover Image: Shark Bay Mouse. LAWLER.
Season 2 is heerrreee!
Sorry for the delay! Gabe ended up getting and starting a new job since our last episode. So, to preserve what's left of his sanity, we thought it'd be best to push the start of our new episodes back by a week.
But Episode #17 is worth the wait! We're bickering about bettongs with Caitlin Weatherstone. We talk about why the northern bettong is balancing so close to the edge of extinction when other bettongs seem to be managing okay, hear hairy stories about being evacuated in a tiny helicopter during a 10-minute gap in the tropical rain, and learn about how Alex actually helped Caitlin try to discover unknown bettong populations a couple years ago!
And no we aren't going to start the episodes back at #1 again. Partly because it'd get confusing, but also because saying we have 17 episodes sounds way cooler.
And sorry some of the audio from me (G) sounds a little funky - had a tech breakdown and had to use our backup recording!
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Caitlin
on Instagram: instagram.com/wildsearch/
Produced by Gabriel George & Alex Bezzina
Theme music by Kyle Morley
Episode Cover Image: Northern bettong. STEPHANIE TODD/JCU/WWF-AUS.
It's our second ever bonus episode!
Last week's full episode with manta biologist Asia Haines left a lot of cool stuff on the cutting room floor, including a story about when the organisation she works with (Project Manta) tracked a manta ray down a highway! She also talked through how absolutely anyone can help Project Manta discover more about manta rays through the power of belly photos.
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram:
instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website:
lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Project Manta
on Facebook: facebook.com/ProjectMANTA
Theme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
Album Images: Tracking map of the tag mentioned in the episode & a photo of the tag. PROJECT MANTA.
Our final update episode before we start Season 2!
This Life On The Brink update features biodiversity ranger Denis Stojanovic and the Haast southern brown kiwi. The Haast population of southern brown kiwis is a unique group of kiwis that only numbers around 500. Denis has major updates for us on how the recent breeding season has gone for this tiny population of threatened birds, and some corrections to the voice-overs we made over our original interview for Episode 3!
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Dennis Stojanovic
on Instagram instagram.com/viv.fox
Theme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
Episode Cover Image: Denis the kiwi-wrangler.
Another update on one of our first-ever stories, and this one's a big one!!
Episode 15 of Life On The Brink features the regent honeyeater and Dr Ross Crates.
While Alex was away, Ross patched in (on Christmas Eve - what a legend!!) to give Gabriel a rundown on what had happened since we last touched base. He mentioned some big news that was on the horizon for early 2022. Listen in to hear what happened next!
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Dr Ross Crates
on Twitter https://twitter.com/CratesRoss
Theme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Gabriel George & Alex Bezzina
Episode Cover Image: Regent honeyeater. ROSS CRATES, PhD.
SURPRISE STORY UPDATE!
Episode 14 of Life On The Brink features Dr Daniella Teixeira and the glossy black cockatoo (again!!)
Daniella has been busy since we last talked to her in what turned out to be the first ever episode of Life On The Brink. Listen in to hear about new data showing how the 2019/20 bushfires impacted the very rare glossy black cockatoos of Kangaroo Island, the new population of birds Daniella has switched her focus to, and what you can do to save glossy black cockatoos in mainland Australia.
We'll have a couple more story updates coming your way throughout the next few weeks as we gear up for Season 2 of Life On The Brink!
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram instagram.com/@lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Daniella
on Instagram instagram.com/daniellalteixeira
and her website: www.daniellateixeira.com/
Follow The Black Cockatoo Project on Instagram instagram.com/@blackcockatooproject
Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Gabriel George & Alex Bezzina
Episode Feature Image: Glossy black cockatoos. MICHAELA SHERWOOD VIA THE GLOSSY BLACK CONSERVANCY.
Lions #2 electric boogaloo you're carbon credits are due!
(Alex said we had to say that, sorry)
It's Episode 13 of Life On The Brink, featuring LIONS. Didn't we already do lions? Yes we did... deal with it. But also this episode is very different from our first lion episode. Last time we focused on the tree-climbing lions of Uganda, this time we're focusing on the equally unique lions in Kenya known for their maneless males! In the episode, our over-achieving guest Dr James Allan talks about what it's like to grow up with a family that owns a safari company in a national park the size of Switzerland, we hear about the research he was involved in that influenced international conservation policy, and we talk with James about his new project - a company dedicated to capturing carbon AND saving threatened animals at the same time!
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Life On The Brink
on Twitter: twitter.com/jamesecology
Find Koobi Carbon
via their website: koobicarbon.com
Produced by Gabriel George & Alex Bezzina
Theme music by Kyle Morley
Episode Cover Image: Man-eating maneless male lions (ones from the railway James mentions in the episode) from Tsavo, Kenya. Currently full of stuffing instead of human as they stand on display in the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, USA. JEFFREY JUNG.
We're back in New Zealand for Episode 12 of Life On The Brink!!
And this time, it's all for the tuatara! Some call it a "living fossil", others say they have a mystical third eye, but what we do know is there are a lot less of them than there used to be. In the episode, we run the tuatara rumours past our guest PhD Candidate Sarah Lamar and ask her why she researched the speed of their sperm in the name of conservation!
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Life On The Brink
on Twitter: twitter.com/SphenodonSarah
Produced by Gabriel George & Alex Bezzina
Theme music by Kyle Morley
Episode Cover Image: A tuatara. SARAH LAMAR.
What could possibly out a 6-metre hammerhead? Humans, of course.
This is Episode 11 of Life On The Brink, and the third installment of our little four-part series on elasmobranchs, featuring the Great Hammerhead shark.
In the episode we get into how to measure a shark's stress levels, what it's like breaking into the shark science field, and ask our guest Deborah Santos de Azevedo deep questions like 'Why do hammerheads have hammer heads?'.
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram: instagram.com/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Deb
on Twitter: @diverdebb
Produced by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
Theme music by Kyle Morley
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/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Project Manta
on Facebook: facebook.com/ProjectMANTA
Produced 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.
...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/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Arjun
on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArjunGswamy
Produced by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
Theme music by Kyle Morley
Episode Cover Image: Wild bengal tiger.
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/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow 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.
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/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Find 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.
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
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/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and via our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Dr Ross Crates
on Twitter https://twitter.com/CratesRoss
Theme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
Episode Cover Image: Regent honeyeater. ROSS CRATES, PhD.
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/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Melissa Staines
on Instagram instagram.com/melissa.staines
Theme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
Episode Cover Image: Green sea turtle hatchling. MELISSA STAINES.
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/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Dennis Stojanovic
on Instagram instagram.com/viv.fox
Theme Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Alex Bezzina & Gabriel George
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/lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Alex Braczkowski
on Instagram instagram.com/alexbraczkowski
check 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.
Heeeeyyyyyoooo…welcome to the first episode of Life On The Brink with Alex and Gabriel!
We speak to the incredible Dr Daniella Teixeira about the endangered Kangaroo Island Glossy Black Cockatoos. So get ready to learn about how these birds and Daniella felt the heat of the 2020 bushfires, discover how they both unknowingly ended up on a David Attenborough Documentary, and hear some amazing vocal performances (both avian and human).
Follow Life On The Brink
on Instagram instagram.com/@lifeonthebrinkpodcast
and our website: lifeonthebrinkpodcast.com
Follow Daniella
on Instagram instagram.com/daniellalteixeira
and her website: www.daniellateixeira.com/
Follow The Black Cockatoo Project
on Instagram instagram.com/@blackcockatooproject
and their website: blackcockatoos.org.au/
Music by Kyle Morley
Production by Angus Bezzina, Gabriel George, and Alex Bezzina
Episode Feature Image: Glossy black cockatoos. MICHAELA SHERWOOD VIA THE GLOSSY BLACK CONSERVANCY.
Everything has to start somewhere, and Life On The Brink starts here!
We are Gabriel & Alex, a couple of conservation scientists and science communicators. During our time studying and researching the natural world, we've been lucky enough to meet some of the most incredible people - people who have dedicated their lives to saving species they love. This podcast is dedicated to telling their stories, and the stories of the species they protect.
Check back for the first episodes in August. Until then, find us on our Instagram @lifeonthebrinkpodcast to follow the production process.
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