Life On The Brink

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. 

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!

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!

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! 

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!

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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!

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!

This is our third ever bonus episode!!!

Last week's episode introduced us to Deborah Santos de Azevedo the incredible great hammerhead researcher who works with stressed-out sharks. She also happens to be a member of Minorities in Shark Science (MISS) an awesome organisation looking to build diversity in marine research and support minorities in the field. So this episode focuses on Deb's experiences as a Brazillian immigrant making her way into the wild world of shark science and her message that you aren't alone and if you work hard enough you can work with hammerheads too!

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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?'.

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.

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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.

...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?!'.

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. 

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! 

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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. 

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.

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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.  

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. 

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. 

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. 

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).