Mountain gorilla recovery proves change is possible. Gorilla Doctors Chief Communications Officer Amy Bond joins environmental scholar Dr. Elena Berg to examine how long-term conservation succeeds and how people remain engaged when progress is slow and uncertain. Bond explains how Gorilla Doctors provides veterinary care to eastern gorillas in Rwanda, Uganda, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo while keeping animals with their families in the wild. The conversation connects ecological research, cooperation, communication, and sustained institutional work to the recovery of mountain gorillas, the only great ape whose population is increasing. It also explores climate anxiety, environmental agency, hope, and the emotional discipline required to continue working without guarantees. A conservation story about measurable progress and the work that must continue.

Episode Guests: Amy Bond and Dr. Elena Berg

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Audio Editing by Clark Marchese, Video Editing by Oscar Padula

Videography and Set Design by Le Studio Du Passage

Cover Art by Laurel Wong

Theme music by Nela Ruiz

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Some environmental wonders resist the camera. Environmental filmmaker and cinematographer Dr. Isabelle Carbonell takes listeners to Bio Bay in Vieques, Puerto Rico, where dense concentrations of dinoflagellates create brilliant bioluminescence that cameras struggle to capture. That technical failure becomes a question about visibility, wonder, embodiment, and whether an imperfect image can open other ways of knowing nature. Carbonell also situates the bay within Vieques's history of colonial extraction, United States military occupation, contamination, and slow environmental violence. The result is an exploration of environmental filmmaking and visual storytelling that asks what environmental communication loses when it values only spectacular images, and what environmental justice can reveal about the things that remain unseen.

Episode Guest: Dr. Isabelle Carbonell

Discover more of Dr. Carbonell’s work on her website

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Audio Editing by Clark Marchese, Video Editing by Oscar Padula

Videography and Set Design by Le Studio Du Passage

Cover Art by Laurel Wong

Theme music by Nela Ruiz

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Most of Earth's species remain unknown to science. Marine biologist and taxonomist Dr. Manuel Caballero Gutierrez explains how scientists estimate global biodiversity and why humanity may currently know only about 25 percent of the species that exist. He walks through taxonomy as scientific detective work, from deep-sea expeditions and specimen collection to anatomical study, DNA analysis, museum archives, formal naming, and publication. The episode examines biodiversity loss, why the shortage of taxonomists matters, how scientific knowledge can disappear with individual specialists, and why species may go extinct before humanity knows they exist. An expansive introduction to biodiversity, ocean exploration, and the ecological research that conservation depends upon.

Episode Guests: Dr. Manuel Callebar Gutierrez

Browse Dr. Callebar Gutierrez’s publications on Research Gate

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Audio Editing by Clark Marchese, Video Editing by Oscar Padula

Videography and Set Design by Le Studio Du Passage

Cover Art by Laurel Wong

Theme music by Nela Ruiz

Find some more Pine Forest Media podcasts below

Listen to Oceanography on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

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Colonial law helped build modern deforestation. Legal historian Dr. Mariana Dias Paes traces how nineteenth-century property law created mechanisms for land dispossession and environmental destruction in Brazil's Atlantic Forest. Her research connects that history to the Amazon and Congo rainforests, where colonial legal systems continue to shape land disputes, court decisions, Indigenous rights, and conservation. Rather than treating environmental law only as a solution, the episode examines how law helped create the conditions for rainforest loss and why those structures persisted after independence. This is an environmental history of private property, colonialism, and the legal architecture still influencing environmental policy, environmental justice, and forest conservation today.

Episode Guests: Dr. Mariana Dias Paes

Browse Dr. Dias Paes’ publications on Google Scholar

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Audio Editing by Clark Marchese, Video Editing by Madelyn Cho Weir

Videography and Set Design by Le Studio Du Passage

Cover Art by Laurel Wong

Theme music by Nela Ruiz

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Science alone does not make environmental change. Amanda Harding and Sarah Glavan of Convene explore the missing space between research, environmental policy, and the decisions people make inside real systems. Using food systems and the EAT-Lancet Commission as a case study, they explain deliberate dialogue and science-policy-society interfaces: structured spaces where researchers, farmers, fishers, Indigenous communities, health professionals, policymakers, and consumers can work through disagreement and power. The episode shows why ecological research cannot simply be handed down as instructions, why lived experience is also a form of knowledge, and how listening can help turn evidence into action. A practical look at what climate solutions require once the science is already available.

Episode Guests: Amanda Harding and Sarah Glavan

Visit the Convene Website to learn more about Deliberate Dialogue

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Hosted by Clark Marchese

Audio Editing by Clark Marchese, Video Editing by Oscar Padula

Videography and Set Design by Le Studio Du Passage

Cover Art by Laurel Wong

Theme music by Nela Ruiz

Find some more Pine Forest Media podcasts below

Listen to Oceanography on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

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Drinking water reveals sustainability's complexity. Environmental scientist and water sommelier Dr. Elena Berg uses bottled water to show why environmental choices rarely divide neatly into good and bad. She traces how geology and mineral content create differences among waters, contrasts multinational bottlers with smaller single-source producers, and examines plastic waste, freshwater access, infrastructure, and environmental justice. The conversation also asks what sustainability means when every product carries an environmental cost and warns against treating it as a label or completed checklist. From tap water and water tasting to the stewardship practiced by some small water farmers, this episode offers an interdisciplinary environmental science case study in how context changes both the problem and the available response.

Episode Guest: Dr. Elena Berg

Listen to Something in the Water on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

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Hosted by Clark Marchese

Audio Editing by Clark Marchese, Video Editing by Oscar Padula

Videography and Set Design by Le Studio Du Passage

Cover Art by Laurel Wong

Theme music by Nela Ruiz

Find some more Pine Forest Media podcasts below

Listen to Oceanography on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

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Climate change is never socially neutral. Political scientist Dr. Rebecca Marwege explains climate justice by examining who caused the crisis, who experiences the greatest harm, and who has the resources and power to respond. Cases involving the Lebu fishing community in Senegal and Far Rockaway after Hurricane Sandy show how climate adaptation, displacement, rebuilding, and even the ability to remain at home are shaped by inequality. The episode distinguishes climate justice from environmental justice and warns against reductionism, inverse reductionism, and technological solutionism. It makes the case for interdisciplinary research that joins environmental science with political, social, and ethical analysis so that climate policy protects communities instead of reproducing existing injustice.

Episode Guest: Dr. Rebecca Marwege

Learn more about Dr. Marwege’s research on her website

Discover the recently published Climate Justice Now, edited by Dr. Rebecca Marwege, Dr. Nikhar Gaikwad and Dr. Joerg Schaefer

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Explore the Pine Forest Media digital ecosystem on our website

Find the full-length video on YouTube @PineForestPods

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Hosted by Clark Marchese and Allison Thompson

Audio Editing by Clark Marchese, Video Editing by Oscar Padula

Videography and Set Design by Le Studio Du Passage

Cover Art by Laurel Wong

Theme music by Nela Ruiz

Find some more Pine Forest Media podcasts below

Listen to Oceanography on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

Listen to Plastic Podcast on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

Listen to South Pole on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

Listen to Something in the Water on Spotify or Apple Podcasts

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.