This episode is a conversation with Matt Shirley, a conservation scientist with a particular passion for and interest in crocodiles. I met Matt on a shoot, where he was the animal expert and I was brought in to deal with some pretty challenging technical problems, in order to capture crocodile behaviour which had not only never been filmed but had never even been observed in the wild before. Unfortunately, I can’t say any more as we are signed up to an NDA…. So I got to know Matt on a long...

This episode is a conversation with Iain McGilchrist, a psychiatrist and writer, who originally started at Oxford as a literary scholar. Dissatisfied with literary criticism, having published Against Criticism in 1982, McGilchrist sought greater philosophical understanding of human experience by retraining in medicine and he went on to become a Consultant Psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital in London. I heard McGilchrist talk on the Sam Harris podcast and was immediately fascinated by his...

This episode of the Podcast is a conversation with Tristan Guttridge a biologist with a passion for sharks, in fact he describes himself as a shark fanatic. With a PhD in Behavioural Ecology, based on research he undertook at the Shark Lab in Bimini, Bahamas, Tristan has many strings to his bow as he advocates for greater understanding and protection of sharks. In addition to continued shark research, Tristan has become a well-known presenter on Discovery Channels, and I worked with him in...

This episode of the Podcast is actually a Bonus episode with Jack Goldstone. During our conversation, I asked Jack to talk me through 3 specific examples of social change which help illustrate his model: the British Revolution, the American Civil War and the Chinese Revolutions which ended with Mao and the Communist Party entering Beijing in 1949. When listening back and editing the main Podcast, I felt that these three examples needed to be lifted and put in a separate Podcast with space to...

This episode of The Thought Exchange is a conversation American sociologist, historian and political scientist Jack A Goldstone. Goldstone is author of 13 books and many, many research articles, with a focus on revolutions and social change. In particular, he made a key contributions in looking at the relationship between population cycles and political revolutions. Indeed, there are those who have credited Goldstone with predicting Trump and the turbulent Twenties almost 30 years ago, when...

This episode of The Thought Exchange is a conversation with guerrilla geographer and creative explorer Dan Raven-Ellison. I first met Dan 11 years ago when our sons became friends and I have followed his work with great interest ever since, as he has developed a series of fascinating projects and achieved major success in his field. Dan is a National Geographic explorer and an Ordnance Survey Get Outside Champion. He is passionate about walking through all landscapes, whether rural or urban....

This episode features French physicist and science communicator Christophe Galfard. His background is in theoretical physics and Christophe worked with Professor Stephen Hawking as his PhD student at Cambridge University. I worked with Christophe in 2016, where he co-presented Search for a New Earth with Danielle George. He was also the solo presenter of a French-language version of the programme. While working on his PhD with Hawking, Christophe focused on black holes as an area which...

­This episode is a conversation with Danielle George, Professor of Radio Frequency engineering in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) and Associate Vice President at the University of Manchester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Manchester (University of Manchester). She is a highly-respected scientist and was made Professor in 2014 at the age of 38. Danielle gave the 2014 Royal Institution lecture, at the time only the sixth woman to do so, she was given...

This episode is a conversation with Dr Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. This is the largest natural history museum in the world, by visitor numbers of over 5 million a year. Kirk has a long history in museums, having been the VICE PRESIDENT of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science BEFORE MOVING TO Washington DC in 2012, but his passion and his scientific background are in plant palaeontology. With his first published paper appearing at...

When I heard the story of the gorillas in San Diego Zoo which had contracted Covid, my thoughts turned immediately to Gladys and the mountain gorillas of Bwindi. I haven't felt the need to do an update before, but I couldn't stop thinking about Gladys, the mountain gorillas or Bwindi and the people around the park for whom gorilla tourism was so important. I last spoke to Gladys in October and I needed to know how she was and how Uganda was coping with the crisis.

The first episode of Series Two of The Thought Exchange is a conversation with Gladys Kalema-Zikusoka, an extraordinary Ugandan wildlife activist and the vet for the Uganda Wildlife Authority. She was the first person to hold that position and was appointed in in 1995 at the age of 25. The focus of Gladys’s work has been with the gorillas of Bwindi Forest National Park. Just one year after being appointed an outbreak of scabies led to the death of an infant gorilla. Gladys’s work on treating...

This episode is the final one in this first series of The Thought Exchange. I worked with Professor David Montgomery in 2018 and the single solitary day of filming with him, on a remote farm in Kansas has stayed with me ever since. It had a huge impact on me and left me astounded that anyone would farm in any way, other than the one advocated by David Montgomery. On that day, we filmed on a farm belonging to Darin Williams. Darin explained his approach to Regenerative farming, supported by...

This episode is a conversation with Dr Ramadan Hussein, an Egyptian Egyptologist who is in charge of an incredible site in the ancient Necropolis of Sakkara, near Cairo. I was privileged to spend two months filming his dig, 30 metres or 100ft, underground. Now bear in mind that 100ft is a 14-storey building, we were that deep underneath the surface when Ramadan made some incredible discoveries. His site is helping rewrite the model of burial in Egypt 2600 years ago, with the first ever...

This episode is a conversation with David Holland, Professor of Mathematics and Atmosphere/Ocean Science at New York University. David is one of the leading researchers into the mechanisms of glacier and ice-cap melting, working in both the Arctic and Antarctic. Along with his wife Denise who is the Field and Logistics Officer for David’s team, David’s work focuses on understanding ice melt and how it relates to the Ice caps in Greenland and the Antarctic. He uses Mathematics to model and...

This episode is a conversation with Gerhard Steenkamp, a vet who is a dental specialist and pioneer in surgery on the skull and teeth of wild animals. With a successful practise in South Africa, Gerhard conducts some 500 operations a year, many on domestic pets. However, his passion is the wildlife of his native continent and he has conducted numerous operations on elephants, rhinos, lions, cheetahs and other symbolic animals of Africa. I worked with Gerhard on Big Animal surgery where he...

This episode is a conversation with Jaelyn Eberle, a mammal palaeontologist based at the University of Colorado but who works primarily in the Arctic. I worked with her just a few hundred miles from the North Pole on Ellesmere Island, in 2018 for Polar Extremes, a climate change special for NOVA on PBS in the States. I really enjoyed my time with Jaelyn and was fascinated by the environment she was reconstructing in the Arctic 50 million years ago, a strange, swampy forest, dark for 6 months...

Firstly, I wanted to thank everyone for their feedback and suggestions. In particular, Barbara Ali in the US suggested a potential guest, who I am delighted to have booked in for series 2. Dr Gladys Kalema Zikusoka is a vet in Uganda working with gorillas and studying human illnesses in the Gorilla population, but also working with local people to protect gorillas and their habitat. I am confirming other guests who I will be announcing as soon as possible. But I am still looking for more...

This podcast is a conversation with Albert Lin, probably best known for his work as a presenter on National Geographic TV. Most recently he has appeared on Lost Cities with Albert Lin. In that series, Albert used drone-mounted Laser scanning which can punch through the vegetation to reveal ancient archaeological features on the landscape. I was fortunate to work with with Albert on two programmes in the series: one on Petra in Jordan and the other on Macchu Picchu in Peru Albert describes...

A conversation with Kayla Iacovino, who’s job title is Experimental Petrologist for NASA. I worked with Kayla in 2018 for a NOVA special called Polar Extremes and she is a fantastic scientist and communicator. But more than that Kayla is a Badass! She has just applied for the latest Astronaut intake, so fingers crossed for her there. She is also a massive Sci fi fan and runs Trekmovie.com, the largest unofficial Star Trek website, plus the Star Trek Podcast ShuttlePod. In her work Kayla is...

Ep 1: Live now Professor Donald Johanson - paleoanthropologist. Ep 2: 15th June. Kayla Iacovino - volcanologist, petrologist and Star Trek fan. Ep 3: 29th June. Albert Lin - tv presenter, explorer, geographer and technologist. Ep 4: 13th July. Jaelyn Eberle - mammal paleontologist, studying the Arctic region. Ep 5: 27th July Gerhard Steenkamp - dental vet operating on big wildlife. Ep 6: 10th August. Professor David Holland - glacial melt specialist. Ep 7: 24th August. Ramadan...

A conversation with Professor Donald Johanson, discoverer of the Lucy skeleton in 1974 in the remote Ethiopian desert of Afar. Lucy was a 3.2 million year-old hominid who was the first discovery of her species, a bipedal ape and, according to some theories, a direct ancestor of human beings. Lucy herself has courted controversy and fuelled lots of theories and counter-theories about Human Origins. Johanson published a book on his discovery called Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind and has...

Hi - I'm Piers and this is The Thought Exchange. Welcome to the office at the bottom of the garden where I've been connecting with people all over the world to talk to them about their ideas in their work. And I'm really excited about the first episode launching on Monday the 1st of June which is with Professor Donald Johanson. Iwas incredibly privileged to travel to the Afar Desert to the site of the Lucy discovery with him in 2012 to film a series called in a fish for PBS. I hope that I...

A new fortnightly Podcast, the first episode will launch on 1st June with an interview with Humans Origin titan Professor Donald Johanson. I decided to record these podcasts because my career filming documentaries­ has given me unique and privileged access to some incredible scientists and thinkers. I have often had an opportunity to share conversation and to satisfy my natural curiosity for learning, experiencing and exploring people, places and ideas. When you are on location with...