Catie chats with Dr. Sapphire McMullan-Fisher, an ecologist with a special interest in biodiversity conservation, particularly macrofungi and mosses. Sapphire is a renowned scientific researcher, speaker, teacher and author with a knack for communicating fungi’s vital ecological roles — and why we should all pay a lot more attention to these remarkable, all-connecting entities. She's is also a pretty radical member of the community here in Naarm/Melbourne, who last year let Catie + George transform her suburban backyard into a market garden through the Growing Farmers program. Wise, lively and friend of the fungi, enjoy this cracking convo with Sapphire McMullan-Fisher. SHOW NOTES Being a Gondwanan Growing up in a mining town in the Pilbara. From saving African animals to fungi fascination. A fire and fungi pHD in Tasmania. Overcoming dyslexia in academia. Ecosystems need fungi! Decomposition + partners of plants. Why to leave the tree debris be. Journey back to the Carboniferous period when all the coal and oil was formed. Fungi eats wood, invertebrates eat fungi, birds eat invertebrates... hey presto! Life goes on. (Even though we’re seriously messing with systems.) How an understanding of matter recycling gives an appreciation of post-humous existence. Patterns + process + life = wow. Where do humans fit in the bigger picture? Should we just hurry up and extinct ourselves, or…? Making space + food in your garden for other organisms who deserve to be here in the landscape. How mindfulness of observing nature increase your understanding of it. Find the things that make your curiosity pop. Ask: what is it? How do I found out more about it? Re-activating our patterning brain. Curiosity as a practice. Being on the spectrum as a superpower. Growing up thinking you’re not clever. Absorbing information in tiny little bites. Expanding communicating styles so that everyone gets it. How expectations shape your view of self. Looking to ecosystems to confirm our need for diversity. Allowing ourselves to learn and love learning. Biology is not a soft science! How a car accident changed everything. Having trust that humans won’t be assholes. They say you need a village to raise a child… I need a village just to survive! The impossibility of going life alone. How do you learn to ask people for help? Letting people self select in how they help. Ways to be be radical and resist the status quo. Being sustainable within your limits. What’s the #1 priority in taking action for the world? Letting your inner child guide us towards more fulfilling life and work. LINKS YOU'LL LOVE Growing Farmers Fun Fungi Ecology Fungi4Land on Insta Support the show
