Show Notes

• Planting Seeds
• RELEVANT PAST EPISODE: Sam Betteridge: Urban Agriculture Month
• RELEVANT PAST EPISODE: David Holmgren – RetroSuburbia: The Downshifters Guide to a Resilient Future
• RELEVANT PAST EPISODE: Helena Norberg-Hodge: Local is Our Future

Timestamps

• [00:00:00] Introduction:
• [00:03:14] Dr Friedlander’s Journey:
• [00:06:13] Eco-Anxiety and Info Glut: 
• [00:12:01] The MAVEN Framework: Metaframes, Actions, Values, Ethos, and News.
• [00:24:36] The B&B Highway Initiative: 
• [00:29:00] The Role of Pollinators: 
• [00:35:41] Biodiversity’s Web of Life: 
• [00:37:11] Practical Actions: 
• [00:43:39] Schools and Corporations: 
• [00:47:41] Call to Action: Invitation for listeners to support the initiative through schools or corporate sponsorship and to explore resources at ps.org.au.

Dr Judy Friedlander: Planting Seeds and the B&B Highway

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:00] Feeling stressed. Overwhelmed. It’s time to Unstress your life and focus on controlling what you can control. I’m Dr Ron Ehrlich, host of the Unstress Health podcast, inviting you to join the Unstress health community and discover a holistic approach that helps you more effectively face the daily challenges of our modern world and effectively recover each and every day. Unstress Health is here to provide you with advice and support that is independent of industry and influence, an influence that that’s easy to miss but difficult to ignore. Our focus is on building mental fitness. Your mind can be your best friend or your worst enemy. Mental fitness is the key. Our three phased approach Target Mindset. Boost your positive intelligence quotient and move from self-sabotage to self-mastery. Secondly, the challenges We redefine what stress means in our modern world. And thirdly, Recovery master the five pillars of Health. As a member of the Unstress health community. You’ll turn obstacles into opportunities with expert led courses, curated podcasts, personalised health assessments, supportive community, and much, much more. Join Unstress Health today and together let’s not just survive but thrive. Click on the link below or visit Unstress health.com. Hello and welcome to Unstress Health. My name is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Well, today we explore sustainability, biodiversity. We talk about pollination. We talk about bees. Well, my guest is Dr Judy Friedlander, and she is passionate about all of that and making a huge difference. Judy’s expertise and impact in environmental advocacy stems from her varied and professional background in high level journalism, academia, campaigning and sustainability research. Now, before funding a founding and funding the Planting Seeds organisation, they can be found at ps.org.au. Judy had an impressive media and journalistic career and we talk about that in this podcast. Judy’s passion for environmental issues has always been at the forefront of her work and studies, with much of her media work devoted to sustainability interests and investigations. She has a PhD from the Institute for Sustainable Futures at the University of Technology, Sydney, and combines that with many years of experience in the world of media and communications. She’s also a passionate believer in the ability of urban areas to regenerate and increase biodiversity. Look, this is really inspiring about being able to make a difference to the environment in the urban environment. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Dr Judy Friedlander. Welcome to the show, Judy.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:03:14] Thank you. Nice to be here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:03:15] Judy. Sustainability has been a subject we’ve looked at many times on this podcast. And when I was introduced to you planting seeds in the hole being the highway, I just had to get you on and talk about what it is. But before we kick off, I was wondering if you might share with us your own journey. You have a PhD in sustainability. How did you get there?

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:03:40] Yes, it’s a bit of an unusual one. So my background is journalism. I started off working in newspapers, magazines, worked in television, and basically experienced the whole mass media thing. This wonderful job, worked for The Sun Herald, edited the whole back section of The Sun Herald, I think when it was the biggest AP readership, over 1 million readers every week. So through mass media work for the Herald, always interested in environment. You know, I remember when the environmental pages constituted something like five, six pages of the Sydney Morning Herald and I could write about whatever I wanted to. Yeah, so my background is general news reporting and feature writing, but I was always super fascinated in sustainability and environmental issues. And then I saw what was happening with mass media and I saw that the papers were shrinking and the environmental section was shrinking. And it was really concerning me. And I thought because I’d always been interested in the study of media and communication as well. So I went back and I did a masters, which turned into a PhD I’d already done a previous master’s in what was described as interactive multimedia, which was a little bit early for what was happening with social media. But I was very interested in in the changes anyway. So the PhD effectively became how to engage people with environmental issues using media and communications. And the PhD title ended up being raising the agenda of an inconvenient message. And I focussed on meat, meat production and meat consumption because I thought that was really inconvenient. So, yes, so it was called raising the agenda of an inconvenient message, looking at meat consumption and meat production, because I thought that was really very much an inconvenient message. And people love eating, meeting, they love eating meat. And so that took me down this interesting journey of communications theories and all sorts of psychology theories and the science behind it as well. So eight years later, I finished and of course the messaging and the learnings don’t just apply to meat production. They apply to a lot of different inconvenient messages that apply to the environmental area.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:06:13] I know you’ve used we’ve did we did a program recently on Extinction Anxiety and you’ve used the term I have used the term info glut and eco anxiety. Can you just tell us a little bit about what you mean by.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:06:28] Well, yes, I think it’s always worthwhile breaking big issues down into frames. So yes, I talk about InfoQ a lot and I talk about eco anxiety. So there’s two big issues that really are afflicting people in how they can relate to environmental issues. One is the info glut, which is a term, an academic term which really conveys what it’s about. And that is that of course we are experiencing an information explosion in so many different media. And even when we walk around, if we become conscious of all the billboards and the messaging and everything else, it’s constantly flashing images at me, and everyone’s always on their phones, as we all know. And there’s such an array of media. And then on top of that, we have eco anxiety. So it’s a very interesting area. People are definitely aware that we have massive environmental problems and we know from here and from overseas with what’s happening with these terrible environmental and weather situations. We know what’s happening now in the states with the hurricanes, and we know what’s happening here with flooding and the fires that we had saw recently. And so. It really comes down to basic defence mechanisms that a lot of the time people will either be in denial, they’ll switch off, they’ll project, they’ll do all sorts of things because it’s very difficult to deal with. And I was always really fascinated by the fact that bad news sells. People would often ask me that, you know, why is it that people like reading about bad news? In the case of the environment, people don’t like reading about bad news. And I believe it’s because it’s it afflicts them quite often when we read bad news. It’s not as if we we switch ourselves off that we are disconnected from a lot of it. We often say, God, that’s terrible. Those poor people, there but for the grace of God go I. That’s you know, the often quoted that comment. But in the case of the environment, you can’t say that because we know it’s happening around us. So it really, I think, serves to switch people off. There’s also another term called Solestalgia which I think is very important. I saw it featured in a post, a social media post on the weekend and it was used incorrectly. It doesn’t refer to climate change. It refers to the loss of species. And it refers to a very deep seated malaise and depression and concern because people know we are losing species. And if you’re an older person like me, I remember as a child, you know, just how rich the biodiversity was, just even in my suburb. I remember collecting cicadas. I remember actually koalas in back gardens up in Avalon. All the bogong moths. You know, all that. There’s so many millions of little birds around. We know that that’s not happening now. On a certain level, people are reacting viscerally. People know from reading as well that we are losing biodiversity. And that is translating to this concern that very deep often in articulated concerncalled ‘solastalgia’?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:09:59] I mean, you’ve said so much to the mass. I mean, it’s so interesting that you studied mass communication and and that has so  been redefined in the last ten years. I mean, talk about mass communication and taking us down rabbit holes that whereas, you know, 15 or 20 years ago, 30 years ago, we were all reading 2 or 3 newspapers, we were all seeing 2 or 3 news channels. But now the click ability of bad news takes us down so many rabbit holes. It’s not actually surprising that people are anxious because that sells, doesn’t it? I mean, talk about bad news selling. That’s part of that’s part of the business model, isn’t it?

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:10:46] And then, of course, people then tend to react very adversely. And if they can’t cope with it, then they’ll engage with one of these defence mechanisms. Was actually just thinking on the weekend how my basic psychology training really has come to the fore. Because if you think about it, you know, there’s something like, I don’t know now, can’t remember, I think seven basic defence mechanisms and, and they all come to the fore when we think about environmental issues a lot of the time will deny them, will sweep them under the carpet. We’ll project we’ll get angry. Now somebody was saying to me on the weekend that some of the I’m the weather forecasters or the weather bureau in the states are receiving hate mail because they’re being blamed for what’s happening with, you know, with climates and and these incidences. So that’s a classic example in relation to media. I guess that’s what my state was looking at. It was looking at how do you engage people with these big issues, these big environmental issues? And basically, I always laughingly say, yes, I was at it for eight years, but I can summarise it in a minute, which is essentially the elevator pitch. This might be a very short podcast.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:12:00] That’s right.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:12:01] Which is essentially you have to whack people over the head with the facts. They have to understand what the problem is. If they don’t understand the problem or the nature or the extent of the problem. They’re not going to want to do something about it that big. But if you do not simultaneously give them practical, positive and scalable strategies, if you don’t give them the information and the strategies that are scalable and positive that they can enact locally and that they can also do, knowing that they’re joining with others, it’s not going to work whacking them over the head with the information. So I’m not going to talk about my Maven theory, which summarises all this very succinctly.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:12:45] Go on. Go on. Can you. You’ve put it out there. I mean. I mean a lot. The idea of the whacking on, but I love the idea of the positive outcomes, which is precisely what planting seeds in your whole initiative is all about. But let’s whack people on the head first and tell me a bit about the Maven Maven hypotheses.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:13:08] The wave and strategy. So strategy, yeah, it’s a framework. And in actual fact, I think it’s all going to be published fairly soon in a journal article, but essentially stands for M is for metaframes. I’ll go through what all these relate to in the sense A is for actions, V is for values,  E is for ethos and evidence and N is for news, which is a bit surprising, which I’ll explain. So when you think about this pletora of information around us, this infoglut when you want to convince people or educate people or reach people, you have to be really aware of the frames. And as often as not, it’s not one frame. You have to think about the different frames and concerns and issues that people have in relation to an issue. So for example, with meat consumption. People might be concerned about impacts on animal welfare. They might be concerned about the impacts on the environment and they might be concerned about impacts on the health. So when we formulated a strategy and a program, a campaign, I was working with different campaigns for this. We basically reached try to reach all these audiences and then we’d often come up with a a term, an umbrella frame like meat free Mondays or Meat free week or something even broader that would bring in all those different subgroups. When we talk about environmental issues, it’s the same thing. And the B&B Highway, which is the initiative that is Planting Seeds, major program does take that into account. I’ll go into that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:14:57] And, you know, we want to get into that, but I’m still keen on this MAVEN, maven maven strategy because, you know, it is interesting, you used the meat as an example. You’ve mentioned it twice now. And and I’ve often felt, should we be blaming the resource or should we be blaming the way the resources managed? Because there are good examples of animal welfare, positive environment and positive health outcomes if the meat is managed correctly? Yes. Would you would you agree with that?

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:15:33] We still need to reduce our meat intake, but there is a place for meat eating for those people who want to eat meat. You’re not going to convince people not to eat meat. And there are health aspects related to that. Of course, that I guess comes into the top down, bottom up approach.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:51] An interesting one.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:15:52] I want to.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:53] Talk to you about.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:15:54] We can’t we can’t just do everything from the top down. We need to also it has to be push, pull. People need to be motivated and change their behaviours. And it’s not going to happen just by people telling them to change it. It needs to be an individual and a personal approach as well. So in relation to meat, yes, it’s broad. Well, I move on to the A and Maven.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:18] Yeah. Yeah. Let’s move on to the action.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:16:22] Yeah. So I suppose it’s pretty self-evident. So when you’re encouraging people to do something or educating them about an issue, you need to give them actions that they can apply so that they can help as well. So obviously we’ve made it’s as much meat or with biodiversity, there’s certain issues which are going to be highway with a V. These are really interesting ones and I love talking about values and if you’re not interested in values, then don’t listen. Now you will hear values.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:58] None of my listeners you wouldn’t be talking. You know, anybody listening to this is interested in values. Judy, I think I could stick my neck out that far. Go on. Values.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:17:08] Okay. So values are two different sets of values. We have news values and we have other values, personal values, intrinsic and extrinsic values. So I’ll start with news values. So, of course, I guess what I’m really talking about is how do you communicate an issue? And I might be talking about news values, but it really applies to any type of communication. So key news values, for example, are things like you need to make it significant. You need to think about using a prominent organisation or person it needs. Sometimes it can be fun and quirky and there’s others as well. And the key ones are making it relevant to the reader or the listener or those that are engaging and making it significant. Why is it important to them? There’s another one called Conflict, which is often invoked in news reporting is nothing like a bit of emotion and conflict to get people engaged. But when it comes to environmental issues, that’s a no. I might be looked into that and that basically I won’t go into it in too much detail. But it’s essentially because, as I was saying before, bad news sells, but it’s to do with conflict that is quite often external. But when you’re talking about environmental issues, a lot of it’s internal. You don’t necessarily want to stir that up too much because people then switch off. So it’s not good to use the conflict frame when we talk about other values. So there’s this amazing person called Schwartz. He actually used to be a rabbi, but he moved into academia and he’s the father of values theory. And Schwartz has ten, basically. And the research shows this through thousands of global studies, that people generally have ten values that are important to them and they can be divided into intrinsic and extrinsic. So an example of extrinsic are things like power, authority, success, intrinsic are things like universal values. You have others more that had to do with tradition. They’re in the middle. But the theory goes that if you’re trying to and it’s not just a theory, there’s studies that have looked at this which back it up, that if you’re trying to convince people to do something that invokes a larger than self aim or objective helping nature or helping people who are less fortunate, that type of thing, it doesn’t serve your message to invoke extrinsic values. It doesn’t serve your message to say help people who are poor so you get rich or or help climate change by saving money because it’s very short term and it’s very it’s counterproductive. So there’s not enough time to go into it. I think I really super recommend that people look up these testing values because you will suddenly realise, as I did, that’s why I like that person, even though they seem different to me because there’s obviously that values important to me that I hadn’t realised. Anyway, so that’s values. E e is ethos. So Maven is ethos and evidence. So you’re not going to convince anyone on an issue unless you’ve got the evidence and ethos relates to the institutions, the organisations that are supporting this evidence as well.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:20:55] Well, that’s a that’s a really topical one, isn’t it? And I mean, having been in health care, this preoccupation with evidence based medicine is obviously a driver for most people’s decisions. But where that evidence comes from is a very important part. It’s often missed.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:21:15] Yes, it is. It is. I mean, I think that when I was doing my PhD, in fact, the head of media department at UTS said to me, you have to look at Aristotle’s theory, rhetoric, theory. I thought, why is he recommending something that’s thousands of years old? And of course, it became one of the leading frameworks. And a lot of people, a lot of academics talk about rhetoric theory, okay, it’s quite complex. But the three important things are Aristotle said. You have to be aware of ethos, pathos and logos. You think about it back in the day when Aristotle and others were trying to reach people, they had thousands of people in front of them. We still have thousands of people, but they’re not necessarily physically there. Same things apply. Ethos is the institution or the evidence is actually the institution. Logos is the facts and pathos is the emotional component anyway. And in in Maven. Yes. Now, this is a bit surprising. We know that the media landscape has changed, but news is still really important to get that big message out. So it’s still important, for example, if you can get you know, if you read something in one of your favourite newspapers that’s online or not online or a big news service like the BBC or the New York Times or whatever it is that people read or watch on the other side of things, that does very much that still does set the agenda in many ways and what is important. So it’s still important to to keep that in mind if you’re trying to reach people significantly.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:23:04] Hi, Dr. Ron. Here it I want to invite you to join our Unstress Health community. Now, like this podcast, it’s independent of industry and focuses on taking a holistic approach to human health and to the health of the planet. The two are inseparable. There are so many resources available with membership, including regular live Q&A on specific topics with special guests, including many with our amazing Unstress Health Advisory Panel that we’ve done hundreds of podcasts over listening to with some amazing experts on a wide range of topics. Many are world leaders. But with membership, we have our Unstress LAB podcast series where we take the best of several guests and carefully curated specific topics for episodes which are jam packed full of valuable insights. So join the Unstress Health community. If you’re watching this on our YouTube channel, click on the link below or just visit Unstress health.com to see what’s on offer and join now. I look forward to connecting with you. So when we’ve. Let’s come back to the double approach of whacking people with evidence, but also giving them hope. Let’s start with some of you mentioned the Bogong moths are gone and Scott is going to talk to us a little bit about how how how are things going?

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:24:36] So I think this is a good way to segway into the B&B Highway. So. Everything I’ve just spoken about can be applied to what’s happening with pollinators and local and biodiversity in the urban sense. So the organisation I set up about, I don’t know, six, seven years ago now is called Planting Seeds, and the flagship program is called the B&B  Highway and that stands for Bed and breakfasts or bed and Breakfast for birds, Bees and Biodiversity. And it focuses on pollinators. And as it turns out, a lot of pollinators start with bee bats and bees and butterflies and beetles. There are others that don’t stop with bee, and it’s basically because you can’t always talk about a huge issue. You need to focus on issues that are more bite sized and tangible. And we know that there are species that serve to inspire people. And so bees and biodiversity and butterflies. So the B&B  Highway. Basically is there to encourage people to help. Pollinators in the urban environment. The premise behind the B and B highway is that most Australians live in the urban environment and want to do something that they can do in their suburbs and in their cities. We know that this massive percentage of threatened species live in cities. People don’t realise that. So the big Australia wide environmental report that came out a few years ago, two years ago actually stated, I think it’s 46% of animals of significance live in urban environments and about 25% of plants, which surprises people. And it’s always says because we live in humans, animals and we like to live in areas where there’s water and soils and things like that. So it’s the same thing with other spaces. So we know that what we do in the urban environment can help. And we also know that we are losing plants and pollinators. A lot of people know that we’re losing will, that they will often talk about Bogong moths because it’s something that I remember. People love bees. So even though the Bambi Highway is about birds and bees and butterflies and beetles and plants and habitats and citizen science, people will say, you’re the person. Which is fine because it serves to be an opportunity to introduce the topic and to talk about the broader issues. Funnily enough, in academia, there’s this this thing called the windscreen effect or the windshield effect. And what that means is that we say to people, you know, 20, 30 years ago, 40 years ago, whatever, when people used to go on drives to the country, you know, at the end of the day, you would have this windscreen or windshield that was full of bugs. Yeah. And we don’t have that anymore. And that’s actually used or referred to in academia. Unfortunately, we don’t have as many studies as we should have to do with insects. But there are certainly certain studies which are incredibly alarming which talk about this huge decline. I call it a death dive. But anyway, decline and pollinators are really important for a number of reasons. So firstly, 1 in 3 bites of food are related to pollinators, many of them insects. They are basically part of the food chain, of course. They help purify soil and water. So this is this is how we this is why we focus on pollinators and why we focus on the urban environment. And we also very much focus on education and actions. It’s not just about teaching people things. It’s also about giving them skills. So everything we teach, we go outside and we practice. And that’s very important as well.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:00] The purification of air. And what did you say? Purification of air and water, Pollinators. That’s an interesting perspective I hadn’t considered.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:29:10] Yeah, I mean, it’s basically I mean, the agronomists call it agricultural services or pollinator services services. But yes, it’s it’s all about this web of life. You know, when we go into the schools or corporates or wherever we go to educate, we will talk about all these issues. And just to explain that it’s very complex, but you have to start somewhere.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:34] You mentioned me before, but I’m guessing also industrial agriculture with the use of herbicides, pesticides, fungicides, you know, fertilisers affecting microbiome in the soil would not be helping any of these pollinators.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:29:51] Yeah. Well, because when we go into schools or wherever and we talk about the reasons why pollinators are in decline and plants are in decline, we will talk about that, too. That’s really important. And provide skills and knowledge about, you know, how to plant and without using and how to encourage a rich biodiversity without using chemicals. That’s that’s really important as well.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:30:19] What about the argument, whenever because we’ve talked about this in our discussions on regenerative agriculture and the ethical use of animals to regenerate and can sequester carbon and regenerate soil. What about the argument which says, look, if we didn’t use herbicides, pesticides, chemicals, we wouldn’t be able to feed the world? What would be your response to that?

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:30:43] Look, I think you have to be a pragmatist. It’s that it’s really about discouraging and looking at alternatives as well. I mean, look, it’s the same thing with climate change and renewable energies. And people will say, you’ve got to cut out everything now. We can’t we know we can’t cut out coal immediately, but we are we’re reducing it and we’re actively looking. And we should be actively being encouraged to look at safe alternatives. With consensus and agreement and and invoking research, it’s the same thing with with food and agriculture. It’s incredibly complex as well.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:19] Do you think the the preoccupation with CO2 levels in the in the atmosphere to bring it down to almost like a one issue topic when we talk about environment has distracted us from the other areas of environmental degradation have been going on.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:31:37] Definitely. But I always I always take heart from my many years working in this field because I remember working as a journalist for the Herald, and even prior to that, when I was the associate producer of Animal. I’m into documentary. I didn’t go down to earth. And in those days, we were talking about the ozone layer and the ozone hole, and we actually did something to help. And in fact, I remember telling people that there was this thing called global warming, wasn’t called climate change then. And a lot of the time people didn’t want to hear about it. And they stopped inviting me to dinner parties or they’d say, change the subject. And I was very concerned that the issue of climate change way back then, in the late 80s in the 90s wasn’t being discussed. It is now. And I’ve believed for a long time that the issue of species extinction and depletion and what’s happening with biodiversity is something that has been swept under the carpet. But now it’s starting to emerge, which is exciting. So. And there are overlaps. So just last week, I was invited to present at the first Global Positive Summit. And and I spoke about the B&B highway, which was exciting. And there were nearly a thousand people there. There were. Look, it’s still early. Not early days. Early ish days. And one of the key topics was that we’re trying to find consensus on metrics and how we value biodiversity and put a monetary value on it. And we don’t necessarily want to go down the same route as what’s been happening with carbon credits, which is unfortunately quite often been exploited. But we have to work towards it and there’s a much greater consensus and awareness. And I call it a force of nature that, you know, we do know we are losing species. And a lot of us also know about these other issues that are associated with it, like, for example, zoonotic diseases. So, you know, of course, a lot of people believe that the reason why things like Covid emerge is because of the fact that we are losing our biodiversity and that there are certain species that are coming in contact with one another that don’t know shouldn’t necessarily be coming in contact. So, yes, biodiversity is starting to be an issue that people are aware of.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:02] You’ve mentioned why pollination is important and all of that. And I know this might be a basic question, but remind our listener about why biodiversity so important.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:34:13] So biodiversity is important because because it’s part of the rich web of life. We need a whole array of species around us. It’s like a big spider’s web. You can’t just have one, you know, one strain of is it a scheme to scheme? Is that the word?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:34:37] You mean the fibre of the fibre?

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:34:39] You need to everything needs to be intertwined. And the research shows that, as I was saying before, if you start losing key species, then unfortunately it tends to be a domino effect with people’s health. With health of food supplies, with a whole array of issues, it’s very complex. It’s what academics like to call a wicked problem. How do you teach and explain a very complex area of science by condensing it into more palatable plots? And I guess that’s what we’re trying to do when we educate about pollinators and their links to food production, to species richness, other species that are affected by what’s happening with water, what’s happening with with soil and air. And this it just serves to be, I suppose, a really good working model to teach people about that richness.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:35:41] I actually do like that idea of using the spider’s web as a metaphor for why biodiversity is so important. I mean, talk about the web of life. The as you mentioned, this the more the fibres are there, the stronger the web and the stronger the web of life.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:35:56] Well, I have to say that I’ve was actually asked to write a children’s book, which is being published in February by New South Publishing, and it’s called The Bee Squad. And it’s it’s targeting children from eight to about 14. And I had to write about all these issues in a way that was, I suppose, more palatable towards the younger audience. So that’s the term I came up with. And I was just saying, in fact, one of the publishers this week that I just think that the book is probably suitable for adults too, because it’s such a complex area and you need to it’s quite often adults just don’t know the basic things about biodiversity. I mean, you know, sometimes we’ll go into a school or a or as I said, a corporate site or something and teach people how to plant. Do you know how many people have actually planted something? Many. Most of them are looking confident since it’s just extraordinary.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:36:55] So tell us about Planting Seeds and and the B&B highway. The B and B highway and what individuals in our urban environment can do. I mean, you’ve mentioned planting something. That’s a pretty good start, I’m guessing. But go on, tell us more.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:37:11] Yes. So the B&B Highway, it’s about four things and it’s about doing it in clusters as well so that it becomes a corridor and we say a corridor of learning and a corridor of regeneration where actually in over 200 now being bee sites. And now that’s going to our fourth state in South Australia. So we started in New South Wales and Sydney and have spread out and we’re in Brisbane and also in Victoria and we just want a big grant with Penfolds to go into Adelaide. So the bee and bees, educational and practical, and we have actually worked with the Department of Education to create our resources for national use and the CSIRO for citizen science that the Atlas of Living Australia. And we start off with an indoor session where we teach people about what’s around their local biodiversity. So it will do research on what actually lives in your suburb. And so we actually have people who do all that research for us and we presented with beautiful resources and slides and we’ll focus on the plants and the seas, the ecosystems, the local systems and the local birdlife and insect life around them. And we’ll go outside and we’ll do a biodiversity hunt with resources and sheets where people really start looking at their external area with, with fresh eyes. And, and learn to start identifying things. And the second one, the second session is about planting. So we’ll talk about it’s a deep dive into, well, what does pollination mean? How does it work? What does photosynthesis mean? What what are the differences between plants? Why is it really important to have three layers in a garden? So that’s the key thing. So organisations like BirdLife Australia. Always saying, Please plant more little shrubs. We are losing our little birds. And a big reason is because people are either just putting grass or paving. And then maybe a few shrubs of a few trees, that type of thing, and nothing in between. And it’s really important to have the three layers that we talk about that we talk about things like how you need to have plants flowering all through the year. We talk about all the different flower shapes and the way the butterflies like certain landing pads and bees and how the flies and beetles and all the different flower, the colours that they see and the birds and the bats and things like that. And then we go out and we plant. And so we’ll give everyone a cheap stock. So there’s normally 60 to 100 participants and everybody will plants and we’ll teach the basics of our planting. And then the third one is about habitats. And so habitat construction. So people love to do physical things and they love their nesting boxes. And we might put in a native stingless bee hive, which is a revelation to people that there are there are native bees that live in hives and make honey, and we might make a home for a blue banded bee, which involves mixing clay and sand together. Because we say that people are amazed that there’s possibly 2000 species of bees in Australia.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:37] Yes, that blew me away. When you read your notes about that and thought, wow, okay, 2000 native bees species in Australia. Yeah. And most most of them live in the ground.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:40:49] Correct? Yes. So that’s why we focus on the blue banded bay, because we basically say that there’s actually 11 social bees of those 2000 that make honey and live in hives. But the rest of those 2000 solitary. But they’re still super important and they still pollinate and they do like to hang around together, but they basically lay their eggs to be solitary in that respect. And so and the 70% of those solitary insects live in the ground. So of course people don’t realise that. So that’s why we have to also leave areas of clay and dirt for them to lay their legs. And we’ll focus on a bee like the blue banded bee because it’s very, I describe as a charismatic species, it’s beautiful to look at is called the headbanger of the Insect Kingdom because it shakes its head 300 times a second to pollinate. It’s called a buzz pollinator. And people will say, I’ve never seen one before, but as soon as you start telling people that they’re out there, guess what? They start seeing them.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:53] Wow. And I’m guessing a blue band is a dead giveaway.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:41:56] Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. So this is like there’s four blue bands on the female and five on the male and so on. And so there’s all these interesting things and they pollinate things like tomatoes and all sorts of crops as well. There’s interesting research going on in that respect. And the fourth one is the fourth part of the baby highway is to do with data, and that’s where we’ve worked with the CSIRO and the Atlas of Living Australia. And so we teach people that with the everyday smartphone that they have that now is basically a fantastic way of taking observations and uploading them to biodiversity databases. And we what we’ll do when we do our indoor version or indoor part of this B&B highway program is we’ll pull up a map and we’ll show people all the observations that have been made in the suburb, and people are amazed. And it’s fascinating what you can learn with our naturalists and the Atlas of Living Australia. And so now the everyday observation of an average citizen scientist is generally recognised to be almost as good as a professional. Well, and that’s and researchers are crying out for people to take more observations so that we can build up that really important knowledge. So that’s part of what we do with the B&B highway as well.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:43:24] You must I mean, I know you’ve taken this into many schools. The question the it begs the question, why isn’t every school in Australia doing this? I mean, I guess that’s the aim. Is it Judy?

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:43:39] Yes. I’m glad you said that. Exactly. As Costa said on the program when I was on Gardening Australia, he said, okay, so now we’re in 200 plus schools, but there’s 10,000 schools in Australia. So that’s what we’re aiming at. So yeah, and, and the more schools we’re in, I suppose more compelling it is because we can start creating these wonderful corridors. So for example, we might have 12 schools in Parramatta, which we do have, but we might be able to have 200 schools and. That citizen science thing is also a really nice way that the children can can look at the dashboard and they can see all the other schools and they can see what other students have seen in their area. And also because what we do is we do these biodiversity assessments as well. So we’ll come in before planting and then a year later come back and we’re basically monitoring hopefully that we transfer species from threatened to thriving.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:44:44] so threatened to thriving.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:44:44] So the more schools and the more being bees, the more likely it is that we’re going to see these fantastic threatened species. And we’re starting to have these reports of of insects that haven’t been seen in the schools ever before. And that’s incredibly empowering and positive.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:45:05] And I’m guessing companies, corporations similarly are getting involved in this. Is that is that what’s happening?

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:45:13] Yeah, they’re starting to I really want to focus on that next year because it’s a really great way for companies to firstly offer some corporate social responsibility programs. Once upon a time, corporate CSR and didn’t really talk about environmental programs, but now of course they’re starting to. And also, for example, a lot of companies have European parents and this has actually been mandated quite often with companies that they have to integrate environmental programs. And so the Australian subsidiaries or the parts of the European parent organisation are coming to us and saying, We love your program, can we implement it? And we can say to them, yes, and we can do it not only in your grounds that why don’t you sponsor five schools or ten schools in your in your suburb, and then you can really, you know, multiply the impact and have this fantastic multiplier effect?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:46:16] Wow. Look, it’s just such an exciting initiative. And as you say, apart from whacking people over the head with the bad news, offering them this great avenue of of contributing and doing action, taking action is really empowering. Listen, I just want to ask you one last question, because, you know, we’ll obviously have links to to planting seeds and the people can find out more about the B and B highway and take it into their schools. Is that how they would do it? Would they how would if someone was listening to this and going, look, I want to take this into my to my son or my daughter’s schools? How would I go about doing that?

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:46:54] Fantastic. So, yes. So they can look at our website, which is ps.org.au. And then on that site, there’s a ton of information about the B&B Highway. There’s emails, there’s articles, there’s all sorts of things there. And and they can contact us that way. And we also if a corporate is interested, we do things like lunch and learns as well. And quite often it’s the type of program that’s really applicable to adults as well, learning about citizen science and learning about plants and pollinators as well. And I know that information’s actually on the website.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:47:41] Judy, thank you so much for not only joining us today, but also everything that you are doing and have done and will continue to do. Thank you so much.

Dr Judy Friedlander [00:47:50] Thank you so much for your time. I really enjoyed it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:47:54] Well, who would have thought 2000 different species of bees and most of them, or many of them live in the ground, but biodiversity. And I love that metaphor for, well, why is it important? And when we think about the spider’s web and the web of life, we know that a spider’s web is much stronger when all the strands, all the fibres. A beautifully constructed and interlocking and give that spider’s web incredible strength. Well, the same is true of biodiversity in the web of life that we all find ourselves in. And how wonderful to not only be presented by the problems, but to be offered so many of the solutions. Why this isn’t being rolled out to every single one of the 10,000 schools in Australia. One can only wonder, but one can certainly hope. And there is hope that this will in fact be done and for corporations as well. I mean, talk about making a difference. This is one way of doing that and connecting people with the earth. And this is a theme that we’ve explored many times on this podcast. We will, of course, have links to planting seeds. That’s p.s. dot org dot a you. And I would encourage you to support that and get out there and encourage your school or corporation to get involved. I hope this find you will. Until next time, this is Dr Ron Ehrlich. Be well. Feeling stressed? Overwhelmed. It’s time to Unstress your life. Join the Unstress Health community and transform stress into strength. Build mental fitness from self-sabotage to self-mastery. And together, let’s not just survive, but thrive. Expert led courses, curated podcasts, like minded community and support, and much more. Visit unstresshealth.com today. This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health and related subjects. This content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.