Welcome to the Cannabis

and Science Podcast. I'm your host, Tad Hussey of Kiss Organics.

This is the podcast where we discuss the cutting edge of organic growing from a science-based

perspective and drawn top experts from around the industry to share their wisdom and knowledge.

My guest this week is David Montgomery.

David studied geology at Stanford University before earning his PhD in Geomorphology at

UC Berkeley.

He teaches at the University of Washington where he studies the evolution of topography and

how geological processes shape landscapes and influence ecological systems.

He loved maps as a kid and now writes about the relationship of people to their environment and other things that interest him. In 2008, he was named a MacArthur fellow. He lives with his wife Anne in Seattle, Washington. He's written multiple books, but the ones most interesting to gardeners are dirt, the erosion of civilizations, the hidden half of nature, and growing a

revolution, bringing our soils back to life. In dirt, the erosion of civilizations, he explores

the compelling idea that we are and have long been using up earth's soil. Once bare of protective

vegetation and exposed to wind and rain, cultivated soils erode bit by bit,

slowly enough to be ignored in a single lifetime, but fast enough over centuries to limit the

lifespan of civilizations. A rich mix of history, archaeology, and geology. Dirt traces the role

of soil use and abuse in the history of Mesopotamia, ancient Greece,

the Roman Empire, China, European colonialism, Central America, and the American push westward.

We see how soil has shaped us and how we have shaped soil, as society after society has risen,

prospered, and plowed through a natural endowment of fertile dirt.

David Montgomery sees in the recent rise of organic and no-till farming the hope for a new

agricultural revolution that might help us avoid the fate of previous civilizations.

In the hidden half of nature, which I will discuss in more detail with his wife Anne Beuclay, who is a co-author and also a biologist, is a riveting exploration of how microbes are transforming the way we see nature and ourselves, and could revolutionize agriculture and medicine.

...