The Life Scientific: Pete Smith
Discovery
BBC
4.3 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2022
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Pete Smith is very down to earth. Not least because he’s interested in soil and the vital role it plays in helping us to feed the world, mitigate climate change and maintain a rich diversity of species on planet earth. He was born in a pub and failed the 11+ exam (designed to identify bright children just like him) but he became a distinguished professor nonetheless. Tackling climate change in isolation is a mistake, he says. We need to consider all the challenges facing humanity and identify strategies that deliver benefits on all fronts: food security, bio-diversity and human development goals. He tells Jim Al-Khalili about his life and work and the urgent need for our degraded peat bogs to be restored. Peat bogs that have been drained (for grazing or to plant trees) add to our carbon emissions. Healthy peat bogs, however, are carbon sinks. Producer: Anna Buckley
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ever wondered what the world's wealthiest people did to get so ridiculously rich? |
| 0:05.4 | Our podcast Good Bad Billionaire takes one billionaire at a time and explains exactly how they made their money. |
| 0:11.9 | And then we decide if they are actually good, bad or just plain wealthy. |
| 0:15.5 | So if you want to know if Rihanna is as much of a bad guy as she claims, |
| 0:19.2 | or what Jeff Bezos really did to become the first person in history to pocket a hundred billion dollars, |
| 0:24.6 | listen to Good Bad Billionaire with me, Simon Jack, and me, Zingsing. |
| 0:28.4 | Listen, own BBC sounds. |
| 0:31.0 | Anyone that helps people who are accused of sorcery are also blamed for being sorcerers. |
| 0:36.8 | Life's less ordinary from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:40.0 | Real people with extraordinary stories. |
| 0:42.9 | I started having a strength in me. |
| 0:45.7 | I have to stand up for other women. |
| 0:47.8 | Find out more at the end of this podcast. |
| 0:50.8 | This is Discovery from the BBC World Service. |
| 0:54.0 | I'm Jumal Khalili and in my series The Life Scientific, |
| 0:57.4 | I get to talk to some of the extraordinary men and women who are trying to understand our world |
| 1:02.4 | and make it a better place. |
| 1:04.5 | Today on The Life Scientific, I'm talking to a man who spends a lot of time thinking about soil. |
| 1:10.3 | As any gardener will know the quality of the soil determines which plants will grow |
| 1:14.7 | and which won't. |
| 1:16.4 | What's perhaps less obvious is that there's a lot of carbon stored in soil. |
| 1:20.7 | Twice as much, in fact, as there is in all the vegetation on earth. |
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