Finding Nature

Welcome to or welcome back to the Finding Nature podcast. My name is Nathan Robertson-Ball and this is my show where each week I go longer form with the people who are on the vanguard of driving and delivering work that matters in pursuit of safer, healthier and more just futures. This show is about examining and exploring our inner nature, our relationships to others and our place in the world as...

Today on the show is James O’Hanlon , an author, artist and scientist whose career includes painting building-scale murals, several kids stories and now multiple fascinating and fun adult books. His latest book Liars, Cheats and Copycats; Trickery and Deception in Nature is one mind blowing story after another of how species above and under water are able to camouflage, hide, mimic and dazzle othe...

I’ve learnt the hard way over the years that I need help. And not just help in a way that lightens my to do list or makes things slightly easier on a day to day basis, but the help from those around me in being able to withstand the part terrifying part invigorating approach to re-building my life over the last three years. From holding me when I needed support to sharing insights about my behavio...

As a kid I was obsessed with two things - the Balmain Tigers rugby league team and animals. When I was about seven or eight years old I was gifted a big hardcover book with a tiger on the front cover. The book was hundreds of pages in length, covering every continent and what must have been thousands of species. Nearly 35 years later I vividly remember the look and feel and weight of this book, an...

Today I’m joined by two film makers - Tim and Tristan Kenyon - to talk about their remarkable and emotional documentary, Changing Track . Tim and Tristan are brothers whose lives and careers to date make them unlikely track cycling Paralympic story tellers, but the film is all the better for their lack of cycling knowledge and avoidance of stereotypes of lycra men constantly checking their power o...

Today’s guest is Abby Bloom. I first met Abby in late 2017 and we’ve stayed in close contact since. She’s a remarkable woman and this is her second time on the show, and we get into a lot of her backstory way back in episode three, like being among the first cohort of women at Yale University, and her work designing and implementing healthy systems and programs right around the world. When I met A...

All of us want to make better decisions, and lots of us wish the people around us would make decisions that we thought were better. Imagine being able to do this just by understanding the mechanics and mechanisms of our cognition, by re-organinising how information is presented or communicated to improve engagement or action. Cognitive science and behavioural economics has gone through a huge incr...

Today on the show is Tammi Miller, who was previously a guest in episode 38 after she released her terrific and first book, Paperback Therapy. She’s back today for a different type of episode - a take on the AMA format, but instead of me it’s Ask Tammi Anything. Tammi is a certified practising counsellor, a mental health therapist and as I mentioned, an author. Having been doing Finding Nature for...

Today’s guest is Professor David Kinley, someone who has deeply influenced and inspired my personal approach to a corporate’s responsibility to respect human rights. David holds the chair of human rights law at the university of Sydney, is an academic expert of doughty street chamber in London, a founding member of Australian lawyers for human rights and a board member of Cisarua, an Afghan refuge...

Today on the show is the first and second most popular guest to date - Cameron Tonkinwise. Making his third appearance, Cameron’s previous episodes - number 9 and 40 - equated to a gigantic jump in listenership as well as the number of places the show was getting picked up in. That I think says everything about Cameron - his career and work to date across design, academia and in practice is both u...

Licia Heath is the CEO of Women for Election and she’s on the show today to talk many things politics, women in politics and the future of women in politics. Despite being in a context where slowly slowly incrementalism at best seems to be the political program at the moment - from a middling 2035 emissions target to housing to gender violence to tax reform to indicating support for the theft of c...

This week on the show I have the sister and brother duo Emily and Jack Rowland. Individually Emily and Jack are up to vital work across ocean conservation, plastics eradication, food system revitalisation and equitable health care outcomes, but together they create a dynamic and diverse way of being and doing in the world that I wanted to bring onto the show. One thing I’m conscious of with this s...

Today on the show I have Elaine Johnson - a leading landowner advocate and environment and climate lawyer who’s led some of the most consequential cases against fossil fuel expansion in this state. Her work in and with communities who are opposing the deleterious local impacts of more pollution and being able to frame that within a larger climate change debate is truly remarkable and vital work. I...

Today’s episode is a different one and coincides wth the beginning of Spring here in the Southern Hemisphere. Spring is a time of renewal, rebirth and new beginnings. From ecosystems and landscapes bursting with new life to warmer days and longer daylight hours, the potential of spring rings eternal. I wanted to do this as so many guests have spoken about pivotal moments in their lives that repres...

I’m joined on the show today by Surya Deva. He’s a Professor at the Macquarie Law School, where he’s also the Director of the Environmental Law Research Centre and Business & Human Rights Justice Lab. Surya is also part way through his first term period as the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development . He’s served as a member of the UN’s Working Group on Business and Human Rights, he’...

John Vaillant is today’s guest, and this was a very special conversation that sat within a few days of spending a lot of time together and riffing on everything from new types of fires to debating the merits and qualities of RM Williams or Blundstone boots. John is a renowned author and writer, who for over thirty years has plied his trade in book writing and journalism. His narrative non fiction...

Speaking of the best in the business, today’s guest is Kenneth Roth, a global icon of the human rights movement who perhaps more than just anybody else on this planet has shaped and influenced the defence and promotion of human rights everywhere. Ken was the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch from 1993 when the organisation had around 50 staff until he stepped down from this post thirty year...

Jimmy Stanton-Cooke is on the show this week, and I am so pleased to be bringing you this chat. Already Jimmy has lived the life of a vagabond, a ratbag and a pioneer as well as an agricultural science high school teacher. Few are like him, and to have him on the show today was a long held aspiration and a chance to get beyond the high energy public persona who lived without half of his beard for...

Andy Marlow is on the show today. He’s one of Australia’s most credentialed and awarded architects and passivhaus designers, and has built a career on the forefront of imagining, designing and creating better places for people who breathe. Andy’s career has spanned custom design and built projects on single homes to large commercial projects to civic centre and entire urban renewal projects. There...

Alexander Pui returns to the show today to chat all things climate science, climate risks and climate impacts. Alex is an old colleague who’s made an indelible mark on my career and it’s a pleasure to have him back while he’s in town escaping Tokyo’s suffering heat. Alex has worked across academia, reinsurance, insurance, banking, consulting and technology, is an adjunct fellow at the university o...

Daniel Principe is today’s guest, and this is a conversation I’ve been wanting to have for the entire year, so I’m very pleased to be bringing him onto the show and into your earbuds. I can’t overstate just how important and serious the work that Dan does visiting schools day in day out to engage mostly boys on topics of masculinity, responsibility, pornography, identity and countering the onslaug...

Today’s guest is Emily M Bender. She was recently in Sydney from Seattle to talk about her new book that she wrote with her co-author Alex Hanna called The AI Con; How to fight big tech’s hype and create the future we want . She’s a professor of linguistics at the University of Washington and received her PhD from Stanford, Time Magazine included her as one of the 100 most influential people in ar...

Today’s show is with Hugh White, one of Australia’s most prominent figures on strategic and defence policy, whose career has spanned government and academia. Hugh was a senior advisor to Kim Beazley and Bob Hawke through the 80s and 90s in what was a period of substantial changes for this nation and the way we saw ourselves in the world, before becoming Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligen...

Alex Hillman joins the show today. With the approval of the Woodside North West Shelf approval in recent weeks and the metaphorical fires that’s flamed, Alex’s visit to Sydney was serendipitous to say the least. He’s got 15 years working in the oil and gas sector, including nine in Woodside as their climate change advisor. Now though he the lead oil and gas analyst for the Australasian Centre for...

Sam Jones is today’s guest, he’s the President and Co-founder of the Heartland Initiative and was recently in town from Atlanta in the US. His work at Heartland Initiative focuses on helping investors understand and address human rights issues and related risks within their investment portfolios. He develops methods, tools, and guidance to assist investors in preventing and reducing harm to human...