October 19, 2025 • 23 mins
The new series of Unearthed: The need for seeds from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew launches with a very special conversation.
A long-time champion of nature, His Majesty King Charles III has shown lifelong commitment to conservation and sustainability. As Kew’s Patron, he officially opened the Millennium Seed Bank in 2000 and has taken an active interest in its work ever since.
His Majesty joins Kew’s ambassador for Wakehurst Cate Blanchett, and Kew’s Senior Research Leader in Seed Conservation Dr Elinor Breman in the gardens of Windsor Castle, to reflect on the Millennium Seed Bank’s beginnings, its progress, and its vital role in securing the future of plant life on Earth.
Unearthed - The need for seeds is a Fresh Air production for the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Series Producer: Hannah Fisher, Executive Producer: Annie Day, Director of Content: Michaela Hallam. Sound Design by Dan King.
With special thanks to everyone at Wakehurst and the Millennium Seed bank who helped with the production behind the scenes.
Image of His Majesty The King by Hugo Burnand.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Cate Blanchett (00:03):
Welcome to a new chapter of Unearthed from the Royal
Botanic Gardens, Kew. Now, this series is a little bit
different for an exciting reason because this year marks the
25th anniversary of the Millennium Seed Bank. Now, the Millennium
Seed Bank is the largest store of wild seeds on
(00:23):
earth, and it's also the most biodiverse place on the
planet. The roots of this extraordinary initiative lie tucked away
deep in the Sussex countryside at Wakehurst, Kew's wild botanic
garden, but its impact stretches far beyond those quiet hills.
You might be thinking, " Well, that's fascinating, but why does
(00:44):
it matter to me?" Because the future of life on
Earth may very well depend on the seeds stored within
this bank. I'm Cate Blanchett, and I'm so passionate about
the Millennium Seed Bank's mission that I've become Kew's Ambassador for Wakehurst. And
the work done here is vital. But don't just take
(01:06):
my word for it. In this special episode marking a
momentous milestone, you'll hear from another voice, one that has
long championed the natural world. On a sunny summer afternoon
Kew's Senior Research Leader in Seed Conservation, Dr. Elinor Breman
and I were invited to the private gardens of Windsor
(01:27):
Castle where we had the honor of speaking about the Millennium
Seed Bank with Kew's patron, His Majesty, The King. Now
you may hear the occasional rumble overhead. Windsor lies directly
beneath a busy fight path. It's a gentle reminder perhaps
that nature is so often interrupted by human activity. King
(01:49):
Charles has a deep connection to the natural world, and
this is evident through decades of conservation and philanthropic work.
But you may not know that he opened the Millennium
Seed Bank back in the year 2000, and has taken an active
interest in its progress ever since.
Dr. Elinor Breman (02:08):
I wanted to take you back to the start of
the Millennium Seed Bank.
King Charles (02:11):
Were you there when I came?
Dr. Elinor Breman (02:11):
I was not, unfortunately. I wish I had been. And I
wasn't even there when you came back in 2019.
King Charles (02:18):
Really?
Dr. Elinor Breman (02:18):
But it's been wonderful to have your involvement and support
for all of that time, so thank you so much.
King Charles (02:24):
No, because I knew how important it was.
Cate Blanchett (02:27):
It was such an innovative, state of the art and
bold initiative, so future- facing, but now it's just so
vital. And you've been such a pioneer in this space.
King Charles (02:39):
I do forget that, was it 40 something years ago? 45 years ago? I remember I
became a patron of the Henry Doubleday Research Association, which has
now become Garden Organic. But in those days, it was
actually rescuing all the heritage vegetables and fruits and plants
(03:00):
and everything. Because at the time, all the old varieties were
being thrown away, wasn't considered as well.
Dr. Elinor Breman (03:07):
They were being lost. Right. Yeah.
King Charles (03:07):
And the same with, that's why I became patron of the
Rare Breed Survival Trust, to help with the native breeds
matter. Everything was being shrunk down to the absolute minimum
for maximum production purposes. Anything that was not maximum production
was not considered vital.
Dr. Elinor Breman (03:24):
Was gone.
King Charles (03:24):
But I just felt it was critical to keep the balance always.
Dr. Elinor Breman (03:28):
They're very foresighted.
King Charles (03:28):
Because you may need them at a later stage. Don't throw them away.
Dr. Elinor Breman (03:32):
No.
King Charles (03:33):
So it was quite difficult. I know how absolute critical it
all is in the destruction of rainforests, the extinction of
endless species which have very likely remarkable properties, medical and everything else, without any concern.
Cate Blanchett (03:46):
Yes. It's sort of we understand the built world and the history, but we don't think about the
history contained within a seed.
King Charles (03:55):
No, no, no.
Cate Blanchett (03:56):
And the importance of... I only actually became aware of
the concept of an allium seed through the work that
you've done, so it's been so influential and much appreciated.
King Charles (04:05):
Thank you.
Cate Blanchett (04:05):
But it's all contained and the Seed Bank 25 years on.
Dr. Elinor Breman (04:08):
I know. So it was interesting because it relates to
that... The origins of seed banking of wild plants came
from agriculture and seed saving. And then, one of the
things at the heart of the Millennium Seed Bank, apart
from plant conservation on a global scale, was really that
engagement with the public and making them understand the need
for the conservation. So this is a mini seed bank
(04:30):
in a Tupperware box.
Cate Blanchett (04:32):
State of the art.
Dr. Elinor Breman (04:33):
State of the art, doesn't get any better than this. But you can
bank seeds to international kind of standards just with this
box. And it was something that we developed just after
the Seed Bank opened so that anyone visiting could take
a piece of this science and the conservation home with
them and feel like it was something they could do.
Getting people engaged in conservation has been such a vital
(04:53):
piece of the work.
King Charles (04:55):
I'm so glad. Because now what is it? It's 85%
or something of the indigenous plants here are collected.
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:01):
Yeah, so we've managed to bank already 85% of the
UK's threshened flora. So there's some seeds that you can't
bank. They just don't like being dried and frozen.
Cate Blanchett (05:12):
Recalciant.
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:13):
Recalciant. It's a great name for them, isn't it? But
of those that we can bank, we're about 98% there.
So now we're trying to capture more genetic diversity within
those, just make sure that we've got them collected from
all the populations across the UK. We've done some great
work on UK trees. And in fact, some elms as
part of a conservation program that we've been doing with
(05:33):
Natural England are actually out here in the Windsor Great
Park. Yeah. So we've sent some material back from the brink.
King Charles (05:40):
Well done. Yes, yes, yes.
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:43):
Well, thank you for providing a home for them.
King Charles (05:45):
No, no, no. Well, I keep trying to provide homes for
lots of these sort of things I get given. I went to the National Pinetum the other day in Bedgebury.
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:52):
Yeah, wonderful place.
King Charles (05:53):
Which did start with Kew.
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:55):
Yes.
King Charles (05:55):
Was it in 1925 or was it '29?
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:58):
Yeah, it was back in the '20s, I'm not sure
which year.
King Charles (06:00):
But they've got this incredible collection there.
Dr. Elinor Breman (06:02):
Yeah. No, absolutely. Priceless.
King Charles (06:02):
They've given me something there to try and see if you can...
Dr. Elinor Breman (06:06):
Oh, fantastic. And see if it can grow here as well.
Cate Blanchett (06:10):
I understand there's been a lot of regeneration of this
part of the private garden as well.
King Charles (06:14):
Yes.
Cate Blanchett (06:15):
That's a real labor of love. This didn't look like this three or four years ago.
King Charles (06:18):
Yeah. Because I've been making more beds. I marked them all
out where I wanted them.
Cate Blanchett (06:22):
It's a beautiful design.
King Charles (06:22):
And more trees and things, but trying to keep them going is the problem with this
dry weather.
Cate Blanchett (06:31):
Well, to think that you have to drought-proof of garden here in this bucolic isle is...
King Charles (06:35):
Absolutely, because the key nowadays I think is I've been trying to do
for years is take the rainwater off the roofs and
somehow get it onto the garden.
Dr. Elinor Breman (06:44):
Yes.
King Charles (06:45):
And the grey water is the other thing I've been
trying to show what you can do with.
Cate Blanchett (06:48):
But what you can do with black water too, it
can be purified to drinking.
Dr. Elinor Breman (06:53):
Yeah.
Cate Blanchett (06:53):
But as an Australian, I'm water obsessed. And in fact,
I was really humble, but also inspired by the work
that the Seed Bank had done with partner organizations in
Australia. And after the 2019 bushfires at Cudlee Creek, almost
30,000 hectares were destroyed and there were many species that
(07:16):
were in danger of being completely wiped out. But of
course, with the South Australian Seed Conservation Center, they had
banked over a thousand seeds of a key variety.
Dr. Elinor Breman (07:26):
Yes. It's clover glycine. It was a rare species vulnerable
in Australia, and our partners in Australia had banked it
in 2007, but it had only ever been a small
collection because there were only a few plants left in the wild.
And unfortunately they were lost during those bushfires, but we
were able to send them back the seeds and they
could propagate new plants and collect more seeds. And it's
(07:49):
been a really successful reintroduction story. And I think it
just shows the value of seed banking. It's not a
static place. It's not that we want the seeds to
end up in the bank. They're there for safekeeping. But
the whole idea is they're going to be plants in
a landscape, not seeds in a glass jar in a
minus 20 freezer. That's where they need to be for
now, but it's not their end story.
King Charles (08:08):
Because I was riveted in Australia last year, I managed
to go and visit them briefly, the Botanic Gardens in Canberra.
Dr. Elinor Breman (08:18):
Yes.
King Charles (08:18):
But their particular place where they do the smoke testing.
Dr. Elinor Breman (08:20):
Yeah. So we've got some here.
King Charles (08:26):
They told me about all this there.
Cate Blanchett (08:26):
Senecios.
King Charles (08:26):
Senecios, yes.
Dr. Elinor Breman (08:26):
So these are fire- adapted species, so you have to adapt to
your environment. And these guys will only open once a
fire has been through. So this one, the seed pods
are still closed. We had to blowtorch this-
King Charles (08:38):
Did you? Right. Senecios.
Dr. Elinor Breman (08:39):
... In the lab to get it open because they'll only respond to fire.
King Charles (08:43):
Yep.
Dr. Elinor Breman (08:43):
And then these are another species of Leucadendron from South Africa,
also only responds to fires.
Cate Blanchett (08:48):
So these are the Banksia seeds. There's nothing ugly in nature.
This one is open. It looks like a series of
little mouths, hard little mouths where the seeds have popped
out. And this one is a, well, it's a bit like a toilet brush.
Dr. Elinor Breman (09:02):
It is a little bit like a toilet brush or
a microphone, yes. It does look a little bit like
a cone. It's not botanically a cone, but it kind
of has that feeling of being a cone. I don't
know if you want to smell this, but it smells
of smoke.
King Charles (09:14):
No, this exactly is.
Dr. Elinor Breman (09:15):
We put it in as a smoke solution to get
the seeds to think that they've been through a fire
episode. And only then will they start to germinate. So
we have to tease out and mimic the environment of
all these 40,000 different species that we hold in the
bank, because it's so important to know how to turn
the seed back into a plant. That's the vital step
(09:35):
in the restoration of all of our global habitats that
we're all depending on.
King Charles (09:40):
Right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (09:41):
So yeah, I think for me that part of the
work of the seed bank is vital and the expertise
that people have built up there.
King Charles (09:47):
But I wonder how long it took these ones to adapt to the idea of fire
was the critical?
Dr. Elinor Breman (09:52):
Well, fire has been-
Cate Blanchett (09:53):
40, 000 years.
Dr. Elinor Breman (09:54):
Yeah, exactly. Part of the landscape for a long time.
Cate Blanchett (09:57):
These, even though they are fire resilient and have adapted,
the last few bushfires, the intensity of the heat has
been such that it's making it even difficult for these
seeds to survive. And even though they're part of the
regeneration process after a bushfire, it's just so hot that
it's a challenge even for these ones to survive.
King Charles (10:18):
Which is why I think the great thing is, and
another thing I tried to do 35 years ago, was to try and see if I
could collate another kind of seed bank of all the indigenous
traditional knowledge and wisdom around the world. But in those days, it wouldn't help in any way.
Cate Blanchett (10:32):
No.
King Charles (10:33):
So now the great thing is there are more and
more efforts. One of my organizations I started, the Circular
Bioeconomy Alliance, been trying to help set up these fire
resilience initiatives, particularly in Calder that I discovered in Australia
because they learned so much from the Aboriginal knowledge and
understanding to make sure you'd burn it off.
Cate Blanchett (10:56):
The mosaic burning.
King Charles (10:59):
The fuel load.
Cate Blanchett (10:59):
I had gone to Uluru 25 years ago and two
years ago where took my four children back because they'd
never been to Central Australia. And the difference in the
landscape, because it had been handed over to Indigenous land
managers, was profound. It was La Nina, so it was
very green, but the diversity of grasses and the wildlife
that had had been brought back to the base of
(11:20):
the rock was just, it made me weep. It was
extraordinary, really extraordinary.
Dr. Elinor Breman (11:26):
And nature is resilient. And if we give her the
chance, she will come back.
King Charles (11:30):
That's right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (11:31):
So I see the Seed Bank as buying time to
give nature that chance and to be able to have
those habitats where we can put things back. So the
plants that I brought along today, there's a cylindrophyllum hallii.
Cate Blanchett (11:44):
Fingers, this one looks like a lot of little green squishy fingers.
Dr. Elinor Breman (11:47):
Yeah, it's kind of a succulent starbursts really coming out
in different places. And a pachydermic, this is from Madagascar, and
actually they're quite ornamental plants. They're really beautiful. And unfortunately
they're being collected from the world and so becoming endangered. But
our partners, both SANBI in South Africa and SNGF in
(12:08):
Madagascar are doing a really great job of, they're creating
a little arboretum with some that have been seized in
Madagascar. And in South Africa, they're doing a really great
job of trying to stop the illegal poaching and trade
in succulent plants as well. So I just feel anything
we can do to give nature a hand.
King Charles (12:27):
Absolutely. So do these get bigger?
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:29):
They're going to get much bigger, yes. That one's going
to not go too much bigger because of the pot
size it's in at the minute.
King Charles (12:35):
Yes.
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:35):
Because the glass house is only so large.
King Charles (12:38):
But it could get more.
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:38):
Yeah, they can get a lot bigger. Yes.
King Charles (12:40):
And is it growing literally in virtually nothing, is it?
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:42):
Yeah. It's a very nutrient poor medium, yeah. And we
have two collections in the bank of this species and
a lot more of the cylindrophyllum. That was down to only
six individuals in the wild.
King Charles (12:56):
But this one?
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:57):
Yes.
King Charles (12:57):
These ones, do you treat them the same way? Are they better being dried or frozen or what?
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:59):
So the seeds are being treated in the same way. So
in our Seed Bank, 85% of plants produce seeds that
we call orthodox. So they can withstand drying to 15%
relative humidity, a bit like a long haul flight, I
always say. And then...
Cate Blanchett (13:18):
That was a bad thinking about.
King Charles (13:19):
I don't know. I wouldn't know.
Dr. Elinor Breman (13:22):
You'd be preserving on the flight. Let's look at it
that way. And then, in an airtight container at minus
20. So then that extends their natural lifespan for tens
to hundreds of years, which is amazing. So it provides
an opportunity not just for today, but for future generations.
King Charles (13:43):
And are you increasing the number of collaborators around the world who are able to help with the collections?
Dr. Elinor Breman (13:45):
So I think that's been the real strength of the
Millennium Seed Bank is its global partnership. And over the
last 20 years, we've worked with a hundred different countries
and territories to help them conserve their native flora. And
I think that's almost 300 partners, different institutes. And we
have a large training and capacity building program because ideally
(14:06):
I'd almost love to put us out of business. I
would like all of our partners to have the means
and the wherewithal to be doing this on their own
and conserving their own native flora without any need for
our support. And then with our partners, all the seeds
are stored in the country of origin and a part
of it is sent to us to safety duplication. Yeah.
(14:28):
You always need that extra insurance policy.
Cate Blanchett (14:31):
But there is an urgency to the work that the Seed Bank
does here in this country. I was shocked to learn
that 97% of the wildflower meadows have been decimated. I
don't think it's something that we quite understand here.
Dr. Elinor Breman (14:47):
No.
Cate Blanchett (14:47):
Because we look around us and in the immediate term
we see so much natural beauty, but we don't think
about how fragile it is.
Dr. Elinor Breman (14:54):
Yeah. And the fact that unfortunately, the UK is already biodiversity-
depauperate from the starting point as well. So we've got
a lot of diversity to put back into our own
landscapes, and we're doing a lot of restoration work across
the chalk grassland and also working with partners all across
the Four Nations. I think we've done about a hundred
different restoration projects over the years, which is fantastic; seeing
(15:18):
the seeds leaving the bank and going to their rightful homes.
King Charles (15:22):
Well, I did manage to get an initiative going called
the Coronation Meadows to celebrate my late mama's anniversary of her coronation. But I thought it was a good excuse-
Cate Blanchett (15:29):
To highlight that.
King Charles (15:29):
Because I knew about that real damage has been done to all our flower-
rich meadows since the war, really.
Cate Blanchett (15:43):
Really in that short a space of time.
King Charles (15:45):
Absolutely incredible, because what you can destroy in one day
by just plowing it up takes practically a hundred years
to replace. And it requires constant management, the same management
to create this remarkable diversity. And I've seen it in
Transylvania, it's even more unbelievable.
Dr. Elinor Breman (16:08):
Oh, a spectacular.
King Charles (16:08):
I'm trying to rescue some of those meadows before they
get destroyed because they're unique.
Cate Blanchett (16:14):
And what's the difference between them, forgive my ignorance, the
meadows there and here?
King Charles (16:19):
Well. there's a lot of similarity to what we would've
had in the medieval times.
Cate Blanchett (16:24):
I see.
King Charles (16:24):
I think. There was a terrific arrangement amongst the local
communities as to how they managed it all and shared
the effort. And so on the same, the management of the forests.
Cate Blanchett (16:35):
Right. So they didn't have big large- scale industrial farming.
King Charles (16:37):
No, no, no.
Cate Blanchett (16:37):
So that meant that they could preserve them. Right.
King Charles (16:39):
And it somehow went on and on and on, same way.
And that's what's enabled many of these meadows to have
something like 17 or 18 or something different species of orchid.
Dr. Elinor Breman (16:52):
Yeah. And it's stunning, the diversity there. We worked with partners
in Romania to help conserve the diversity and across the
whole mountain chain as well, because there's so much unique
diversity there. It's absolutely stunning.
King Charles (17:06):
No, I think it's wonderful what the Seed Bank is doing, but we've got to speed up the process.
Dr. Elinor Breman (17:11):
We need to ramp it up.
Cate Blanchett (17:13):
Yeah.
Dr. Elinor Breman (17:14):
The idea moving forward is to take advantage of a
lot of the technologies that have come in over the
last 25 years. We really need to upscale and improve,
make use of high- throughput screening for genetics, for traits,
for image- taking. There's so much information held within each seed-
King Charles (17:33):
Yes, isn't there.
Dr. Elinor Breman (17:33):
... that we need to access much, much more quickly.
And also, we need to scale up our conservation efforts
unfortunately, because 45% of plant species are now threatened with
extinction, so almost half of the plants around us, which
unimaginable. And I do think there's an education piece in
(17:53):
that people take plants for granted still despite your years
of work and others'; they don't understand their relevance to
the life, to the fact that literally the air we
breathe would not be here without the plants.
Cate Blanchett (18:06):
And also I suppose to enable your partners to build
not necessarily facilities that will survive an airplane crash or
a nuclear disaster as the Seed Bank will, but to have
the capacity.
Dr. Elinor Breman (18:17):
Exactly. Anybody can do seed banking. And we have a
lot of partners who don't have regular electricity supply, but
they can still bank seeds to international standards and conserve
their flora and all of that hope and possibility for
their future.
Cate Blanchett (18:31):
Yeah.
King Charles (18:32):
But you would think that we try to encourage the
pharmaceutical sector to see that actually it's surely in their
interest to invest in the protection and enhancement and restoration
of this biodiversity from which so many actually of the
treatments we are looking for have already come from.
Dr. Elinor Breman (18:52):
Exactly.
King Charles (18:53):
So it's surely in their interest to do that. But one
of the greatest things I've discovered is there's only at the
moment the carbon credits market, which is not as good
as it could be. There's no biodiversity credits set up.
So this is being tried to be established now, because
that would revolutionize the opportunities for investment in the restoration of biodiversity.
Dr. Elinor Breman (19:14):
Definitely. Kew is involved in a lot of those conversations
as well around biodiversity credits and how we can ensure
that all of these large schemes under the current global
biodiversity framework to restore and maintain natural habitats don't do
any harm and actually enhance biodiversity rather than harming it
(19:38):
in tree planting schemes or others. So we need to
monitor that.
King Charles (19:41):
So the only way to do that is to make
sure we have ecosystem services payments.
Dr. Elinor Breman (19:45):
Exactly.
King Charles (19:46):
So you make the-
Dr. Elinor Breman (19:46):
It needs to be valuable.
King Charles (19:48):
You make the trees more valuable alive than dead.
Dr. Elinor Breman (19:50):
Dead. Yes.
King Charles (19:50):
As timber.
Dr. Elinor Breman (19:51):
Yes.
King Charles (19:51):
If they're particular species of it. That's why, again, I feel that agroforestry is such an
important and underutilized forgotten technique, which could make a dramatic
difference in restoring degraded land rapidly.
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:06):
We've seen that with some partners of ours in Mexico,
and the Veracruz state with the coffee plantations. It was
all kind of open and it used to be cloud
forest. And cloud forest, I think it's only less than
1% of Mexico.
King Charles (20:17):
What's cloud forest?
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:17):
It's forest which is at kind of high elevation usually.
King Charles (20:21):
Right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:21):
And then, it draws in its moisture from the cloud
rather than from rain. It's quite a remarkable system. But
we found some native species with working with local communities
that they want to propagate.
King Charles (20:34):
That's right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:34):
And they're using those as a shade over the coffee now.
King Charles (20:35):
That's right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:36):
And set up community nurseries. They get an income from
the nursery. They're growing the species that they are going
to have a use from, and it's producing better coffee.
King Charles (20:45):
Right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:45):
So you need to find those win- win- wins, don't you? And then it all happens.
King Charles (20:48):
But agro organisations are doing exactly that in Ethiopia. And they can now demonstrate that within five years
you can transform a degraded landscape into something that looks like a forest.
And instantly the biodiversity increases
Cate Blanchett (21:10):
Yeah. The only frustration for me about inaction on climate
change is that there's so many extraordinary initiatives right there ready to
be scaled up. There's a willingness there, but there's just,
there's not the direction of the funds.
King Charles (21:31):
And there's that lack of awareness too, as you were saying about the actual detail of all these things.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:32):
I know.
King Charles (21:32):
Let alone the role of pollinating insects.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:34):
I know we're always told to not have too complex
a message, but nature is complex. Ecosystems are very complex,
and every part needs to be there for it to
work. Yeah.
King Charles (21:45):
Because everything's interconnected. Wonderful. Thank you very much.
Cate Blanchett (21:48):
Thank you so much for making the time.
King Charles (21:50):
Not at all.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:50):
Yeah.
Cate Blanchett (21:51):
With us.
King Charles (21:51):
Well, I hope it helps.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:51):
It does.
King Charles (21:51):
It's so wonderful that you're doing so much to help.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:53):
It helps enormously.
Cate Blanchett (21:55):
But your example and your activity in this space have
been, they're legendary.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:59):
World- leading.
Cate Blanchett (22:00):
So thank you.
King Charles (22:00):
You're kind to say so. I'm not sure how much it's achieved anyway.
Dr. Elinor Breman (22:04):
An awful lot.
King Charles (22:05):
We hope. Well, I'm very proud to be patron of Kew. That's a great thing.
Dr. Elinor Breman (22:07):
Well, thank you so much.
King Charles (22:10):
It does wonderful work.
Cate Blanchett (22:15):
That was His Majesty The King, a proud patron of
Kew and a remarkable voice with which to start this
story of the Millennium Seed Bank. And this is just
the beginning. From the grasslands of Southern England to the
humid landscapes of Thailand, the forests of Southern Australia and
even into outer space, in this series we will travel
(22:36):
far and wide. From visionary scientists to intrepid seed collectors,
we'll meet the extraordinary people safeguarding our planet as we
explore the past, the present, and the vital future of
the Millennium Seed Bank. I'm Cate Blanchett, and this is
Unearthed
(22:59):
your podcasts so you won't miss a moment. Until next
time, thanks for listening.
Welcome to a new chapter of Unearthed from the Royal
Botanic Gardens, Kew. Now, this series is a little bit
different for an exciting reason because this year marks the
25th anniversary of the Millennium Seed Bank. Now, the Millennium
Seed Bank is the largest store of wild seeds on
(00:23):
earth, and it's also the most biodiverse place on the
planet. The roots of this extraordinary initiative lie tucked away
deep in the Sussex countryside at Wakehurst, Kew's wild botanic
garden, but its impact stretches far beyond those quiet hills.
You might be thinking, " Well, that's fascinating, but why does
(00:44):
it matter to me?" Because the future of life on
Earth may very well depend on the seeds stored within
this bank. I'm Cate Blanchett, and I'm so passionate about
the Millennium Seed Bank's mission that I've become Kew's Ambassador for Wakehurst. And
the work done here is vital. But don't just take
(01:06):
my word for it. In this special episode marking a
momentous milestone, you'll hear from another voice, one that has
long championed the natural world. On a sunny summer afternoon
Kew's Senior Research Leader in Seed Conservation, Dr. Elinor Breman
and I were invited to the private gardens of Windsor
(01:27):
Castle where we had the honor of speaking about the Millennium
Seed Bank with Kew's patron, His Majesty, The King. Now
you may hear the occasional rumble overhead. Windsor lies directly
beneath a busy fight path. It's a gentle reminder perhaps
that nature is so often interrupted by human activity. King
(01:49):
Charles has a deep connection to the natural world, and
this is evident through decades of conservation and philanthropic work.
But you may not know that he opened the Millennium
Seed Bank back in the year 2000, and has taken an active
interest in its progress ever since.
Dr. Elinor Breman (02:08):
I wanted to take you back to the start of
the Millennium Seed Bank.
King Charles (02:11):
Were you there when I came?
Dr. Elinor Breman (02:11):
I was not, unfortunately. I wish I had been. And I
wasn't even there when you came back in 2019.
King Charles (02:18):
Really?
Dr. Elinor Breman (02:18):
But it's been wonderful to have your involvement and support
for all of that time, so thank you so much.
King Charles (02:24):
No, because I knew how important it was.
Cate Blanchett (02:27):
It was such an innovative, state of the art and
bold initiative, so future- facing, but now it's just so
vital. And you've been such a pioneer in this space.
King Charles (02:39):
I do forget that, was it 40 something years ago? 45 years ago? I remember I
became a patron of the Henry Doubleday Research Association, which has
now become Garden Organic. But in those days, it was
actually rescuing all the heritage vegetables and fruits and plants
(03:00):
and everything. Because at the time, all the old varieties were
being thrown away, wasn't considered as well.
Dr. Elinor Breman (03:07):
They were being lost. Right. Yeah.
King Charles (03:07):
And the same with, that's why I became patron of the
Rare Breed Survival Trust, to help with the native breeds
matter. Everything was being shrunk down to the absolute minimum
for maximum production purposes. Anything that was not maximum production
was not considered vital.
Dr. Elinor Breman (03:24):
Was gone.
King Charles (03:24):
But I just felt it was critical to keep the balance always.
Dr. Elinor Breman (03:28):
They're very foresighted.
King Charles (03:28):
Because you may need them at a later stage. Don't throw them away.
Dr. Elinor Breman (03:32):
No.
King Charles (03:33):
So it was quite difficult. I know how absolute critical it
all is in the destruction of rainforests, the extinction of
endless species which have very likely remarkable properties, medical and everything else, without any concern.
Cate Blanchett (03:46):
Yes. It's sort of we understand the built world and the history, but we don't think about the
history contained within a seed.
King Charles (03:55):
No, no, no.
Cate Blanchett (03:56):
And the importance of... I only actually became aware of
the concept of an allium seed through the work that
you've done, so it's been so influential and much appreciated.
King Charles (04:05):
Thank you.
Cate Blanchett (04:05):
But it's all contained and the Seed Bank 25 years on.
Dr. Elinor Breman (04:08):
I know. So it was interesting because it relates to
that... The origins of seed banking of wild plants came
from agriculture and seed saving. And then, one of the
things at the heart of the Millennium Seed Bank, apart
from plant conservation on a global scale, was really that
engagement with the public and making them understand the need
for the conservation. So this is a mini seed bank
(04:30):
in a Tupperware box.
Cate Blanchett (04:32):
State of the art.
Dr. Elinor Breman (04:33):
State of the art, doesn't get any better than this. But you can
bank seeds to international kind of standards just with this
box. And it was something that we developed just after
the Seed Bank opened so that anyone visiting could take
a piece of this science and the conservation home with
them and feel like it was something they could do.
Getting people engaged in conservation has been such a vital
(04:53):
piece of the work.
King Charles (04:55):
I'm so glad. Because now what is it? It's 85%
or something of the indigenous plants here are collected.
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:01):
Yeah, so we've managed to bank already 85% of the
UK's threshened flora. So there's some seeds that you can't
bank. They just don't like being dried and frozen.
Cate Blanchett (05:12):
Recalciant.
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:13):
Recalciant. It's a great name for them, isn't it? But
of those that we can bank, we're about 98% there.
So now we're trying to capture more genetic diversity within
those, just make sure that we've got them collected from
all the populations across the UK. We've done some great
work on UK trees. And in fact, some elms as
part of a conservation program that we've been doing with
(05:33):
Natural England are actually out here in the Windsor Great
Park. Yeah. So we've sent some material back from the brink.
King Charles (05:40):
Well done. Yes, yes, yes.
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:43):
Well, thank you for providing a home for them.
King Charles (05:45):
No, no, no. Well, I keep trying to provide homes for
lots of these sort of things I get given. I went to the National Pinetum the other day in Bedgebury.
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:52):
Yeah, wonderful place.
King Charles (05:53):
Which did start with Kew.
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:55):
Yes.
King Charles (05:55):
Was it in 1925 or was it '29?
Dr. Elinor Breman (05:58):
Yeah, it was back in the '20s, I'm not sure
which year.
King Charles (06:00):
But they've got this incredible collection there.
Dr. Elinor Breman (06:02):
Yeah. No, absolutely. Priceless.
King Charles (06:02):
They've given me something there to try and see if you can...
Dr. Elinor Breman (06:06):
Oh, fantastic. And see if it can grow here as well.
Cate Blanchett (06:10):
I understand there's been a lot of regeneration of this
part of the private garden as well.
King Charles (06:14):
Yes.
Cate Blanchett (06:15):
That's a real labor of love. This didn't look like this three or four years ago.
King Charles (06:18):
Yeah. Because I've been making more beds. I marked them all
out where I wanted them.
Cate Blanchett (06:22):
It's a beautiful design.
King Charles (06:22):
And more trees and things, but trying to keep them going is the problem with this
dry weather.
Cate Blanchett (06:31):
Well, to think that you have to drought-proof of garden here in this bucolic isle is...
King Charles (06:35):
Absolutely, because the key nowadays I think is I've been trying to do
for years is take the rainwater off the roofs and
somehow get it onto the garden.
Dr. Elinor Breman (06:44):
Yes.
King Charles (06:45):
And the grey water is the other thing I've been
trying to show what you can do with.
Cate Blanchett (06:48):
But what you can do with black water too, it
can be purified to drinking.
Dr. Elinor Breman (06:53):
Yeah.
Cate Blanchett (06:53):
But as an Australian, I'm water obsessed. And in fact,
I was really humble, but also inspired by the work
that the Seed Bank had done with partner organizations in
Australia. And after the 2019 bushfires at Cudlee Creek, almost
30,000 hectares were destroyed and there were many species that
(07:16):
were in danger of being completely wiped out. But of
course, with the South Australian Seed Conservation Center, they had
banked over a thousand seeds of a key variety.
Dr. Elinor Breman (07:26):
Yes. It's clover glycine. It was a rare species vulnerable
in Australia, and our partners in Australia had banked it
in 2007, but it had only ever been a small
collection because there were only a few plants left in the wild.
And unfortunately they were lost during those bushfires, but we
were able to send them back the seeds and they
could propagate new plants and collect more seeds. And it's
(07:49):
been a really successful reintroduction story. And I think it
just shows the value of seed banking. It's not a
static place. It's not that we want the seeds to
end up in the bank. They're there for safekeeping. But
the whole idea is they're going to be plants in
a landscape, not seeds in a glass jar in a
minus 20 freezer. That's where they need to be for
now, but it's not their end story.
King Charles (08:08):
Because I was riveted in Australia last year, I managed
to go and visit them briefly, the Botanic Gardens in Canberra.
Dr. Elinor Breman (08:18):
Yes.
King Charles (08:18):
But their particular place where they do the smoke testing.
Dr. Elinor Breman (08:20):
Yeah. So we've got some here.
King Charles (08:26):
They told me about all this there.
Cate Blanchett (08:26):
Senecios.
King Charles (08:26):
Senecios, yes.
Dr. Elinor Breman (08:26):
So these are fire- adapted species, so you have to adapt to
your environment. And these guys will only open once a
fire has been through. So this one, the seed pods
are still closed. We had to blowtorch this-
King Charles (08:38):
Did you? Right. Senecios.
Dr. Elinor Breman (08:39):
... In the lab to get it open because they'll only respond to fire.
King Charles (08:43):
Yep.
Dr. Elinor Breman (08:43):
And then these are another species of Leucadendron from South Africa,
also only responds to fires.
Cate Blanchett (08:48):
So these are the Banksia seeds. There's nothing ugly in nature.
This one is open. It looks like a series of
little mouths, hard little mouths where the seeds have popped
out. And this one is a, well, it's a bit like a toilet brush.
Dr. Elinor Breman (09:02):
It is a little bit like a toilet brush or
a microphone, yes. It does look a little bit like
a cone. It's not botanically a cone, but it kind
of has that feeling of being a cone. I don't
know if you want to smell this, but it smells
of smoke.
King Charles (09:14):
No, this exactly is.
Dr. Elinor Breman (09:15):
We put it in as a smoke solution to get
the seeds to think that they've been through a fire
episode. And only then will they start to germinate. So
we have to tease out and mimic the environment of
all these 40,000 different species that we hold in the
bank, because it's so important to know how to turn
the seed back into a plant. That's the vital step
(09:35):
in the restoration of all of our global habitats that
we're all depending on.
King Charles (09:40):
Right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (09:41):
So yeah, I think for me that part of the
work of the seed bank is vital and the expertise
that people have built up there.
King Charles (09:47):
But I wonder how long it took these ones to adapt to the idea of fire
was the critical?
Dr. Elinor Breman (09:52):
Well, fire has been-
Cate Blanchett (09:53):
40, 000 years.
Dr. Elinor Breman (09:54):
Yeah, exactly. Part of the landscape for a long time.
Cate Blanchett (09:57):
These, even though they are fire resilient and have adapted,
the last few bushfires, the intensity of the heat has
been such that it's making it even difficult for these
seeds to survive. And even though they're part of the
regeneration process after a bushfire, it's just so hot that
it's a challenge even for these ones to survive.
King Charles (10:18):
Which is why I think the great thing is, and
another thing I tried to do 35 years ago, was to try and see if I
could collate another kind of seed bank of all the indigenous
traditional knowledge and wisdom around the world. But in those days, it wouldn't help in any way.
Cate Blanchett (10:32):
No.
King Charles (10:33):
So now the great thing is there are more and
more efforts. One of my organizations I started, the Circular
Bioeconomy Alliance, been trying to help set up these fire
resilience initiatives, particularly in Calder that I discovered in Australia
because they learned so much from the Aboriginal knowledge and
understanding to make sure you'd burn it off.
Cate Blanchett (10:56):
The mosaic burning.
King Charles (10:59):
The fuel load.
Cate Blanchett (10:59):
I had gone to Uluru 25 years ago and two
years ago where took my four children back because they'd
never been to Central Australia. And the difference in the
landscape, because it had been handed over to Indigenous land
managers, was profound. It was La Nina, so it was
very green, but the diversity of grasses and the wildlife
that had had been brought back to the base of
(11:20):
the rock was just, it made me weep. It was
extraordinary, really extraordinary.
Dr. Elinor Breman (11:26):
And nature is resilient. And if we give her the
chance, she will come back.
King Charles (11:30):
That's right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (11:31):
So I see the Seed Bank as buying time to
give nature that chance and to be able to have
those habitats where we can put things back. So the
plants that I brought along today, there's a cylindrophyllum hallii.
Cate Blanchett (11:44):
Fingers, this one looks like a lot of little green squishy fingers.
Dr. Elinor Breman (11:47):
Yeah, it's kind of a succulent starbursts really coming out
in different places. And a pachydermic, this is from Madagascar, and
actually they're quite ornamental plants. They're really beautiful. And unfortunately
they're being collected from the world and so becoming endangered. But
our partners, both SANBI in South Africa and SNGF in
(12:08):
Madagascar are doing a really great job of, they're creating
a little arboretum with some that have been seized in
Madagascar. And in South Africa, they're doing a really great
job of trying to stop the illegal poaching and trade
in succulent plants as well. So I just feel anything
we can do to give nature a hand.
King Charles (12:27):
Absolutely. So do these get bigger?
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:29):
They're going to get much bigger, yes. That one's going
to not go too much bigger because of the pot
size it's in at the minute.
King Charles (12:35):
Yes.
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:35):
Because the glass house is only so large.
King Charles (12:38):
But it could get more.
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:38):
Yeah, they can get a lot bigger. Yes.
King Charles (12:40):
And is it growing literally in virtually nothing, is it?
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:42):
Yeah. It's a very nutrient poor medium, yeah. And we
have two collections in the bank of this species and
a lot more of the cylindrophyllum. That was down to only
six individuals in the wild.
King Charles (12:56):
But this one?
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:57):
Yes.
King Charles (12:57):
These ones, do you treat them the same way? Are they better being dried or frozen or what?
Dr. Elinor Breman (12:59):
So the seeds are being treated in the same way. So
in our Seed Bank, 85% of plants produce seeds that
we call orthodox. So they can withstand drying to 15%
relative humidity, a bit like a long haul flight, I
always say. And then...
Cate Blanchett (13:18):
That was a bad thinking about.
King Charles (13:19):
I don't know. I wouldn't know.
Dr. Elinor Breman (13:22):
You'd be preserving on the flight. Let's look at it
that way. And then, in an airtight container at minus
20. So then that extends their natural lifespan for tens
to hundreds of years, which is amazing. So it provides
an opportunity not just for today, but for future generations.
King Charles (13:43):
And are you increasing the number of collaborators around the world who are able to help with the collections?
Dr. Elinor Breman (13:45):
So I think that's been the real strength of the
Millennium Seed Bank is its global partnership. And over the
last 20 years, we've worked with a hundred different countries
and territories to help them conserve their native flora. And
I think that's almost 300 partners, different institutes. And we
have a large training and capacity building program because ideally
(14:06):
I'd almost love to put us out of business. I
would like all of our partners to have the means
and the wherewithal to be doing this on their own
and conserving their own native flora without any need for
our support. And then with our partners, all the seeds
are stored in the country of origin and a part
of it is sent to us to safety duplication. Yeah.
(14:28):
You always need that extra insurance policy.
Cate Blanchett (14:31):
But there is an urgency to the work that the Seed Bank
does here in this country. I was shocked to learn
that 97% of the wildflower meadows have been decimated. I
don't think it's something that we quite understand here.
Dr. Elinor Breman (14:47):
No.
Cate Blanchett (14:47):
Because we look around us and in the immediate term
we see so much natural beauty, but we don't think
about how fragile it is.
Dr. Elinor Breman (14:54):
Yeah. And the fact that unfortunately, the UK is already biodiversity-
depauperate from the starting point as well. So we've got
a lot of diversity to put back into our own
landscapes, and we're doing a lot of restoration work across
the chalk grassland and also working with partners all across
the Four Nations. I think we've done about a hundred
different restoration projects over the years, which is fantastic; seeing
(15:18):
the seeds leaving the bank and going to their rightful homes.
King Charles (15:22):
Well, I did manage to get an initiative going called
the Coronation Meadows to celebrate my late mama's anniversary of her coronation. But I thought it was a good excuse-
Cate Blanchett (15:29):
To highlight that.
King Charles (15:29):
Because I knew about that real damage has been done to all our flower-
rich meadows since the war, really.
Cate Blanchett (15:43):
Really in that short a space of time.
King Charles (15:45):
Absolutely incredible, because what you can destroy in one day
by just plowing it up takes practically a hundred years
to replace. And it requires constant management, the same management
to create this remarkable diversity. And I've seen it in
Transylvania, it's even more unbelievable.
Dr. Elinor Breman (16:08):
Oh, a spectacular.
King Charles (16:08):
I'm trying to rescue some of those meadows before they
get destroyed because they're unique.
Cate Blanchett (16:14):
And what's the difference between them, forgive my ignorance, the
meadows there and here?
King Charles (16:19):
Well. there's a lot of similarity to what we would've
had in the medieval times.
Cate Blanchett (16:24):
I see.
King Charles (16:24):
I think. There was a terrific arrangement amongst the local
communities as to how they managed it all and shared
the effort. And so on the same, the management of the forests.
Cate Blanchett (16:35):
Right. So they didn't have big large- scale industrial farming.
King Charles (16:37):
No, no, no.
Cate Blanchett (16:37):
So that meant that they could preserve them. Right.
King Charles (16:39):
And it somehow went on and on and on, same way.
And that's what's enabled many of these meadows to have
something like 17 or 18 or something different species of orchid.
Dr. Elinor Breman (16:52):
Yeah. And it's stunning, the diversity there. We worked with partners
in Romania to help conserve the diversity and across the
whole mountain chain as well, because there's so much unique
diversity there. It's absolutely stunning.
King Charles (17:06):
No, I think it's wonderful what the Seed Bank is doing, but we've got to speed up the process.
Dr. Elinor Breman (17:11):
We need to ramp it up.
Cate Blanchett (17:13):
Yeah.
Dr. Elinor Breman (17:14):
The idea moving forward is to take advantage of a
lot of the technologies that have come in over the
last 25 years. We really need to upscale and improve,
make use of high- throughput screening for genetics, for traits,
for image- taking. There's so much information held within each seed-
King Charles (17:33):
Yes, isn't there.
Dr. Elinor Breman (17:33):
... that we need to access much, much more quickly.
And also, we need to scale up our conservation efforts
unfortunately, because 45% of plant species are now threatened with
extinction, so almost half of the plants around us, which
unimaginable. And I do think there's an education piece in
(17:53):
that people take plants for granted still despite your years
of work and others'; they don't understand their relevance to
the life, to the fact that literally the air we
breathe would not be here without the plants.
Cate Blanchett (18:06):
And also I suppose to enable your partners to build
not necessarily facilities that will survive an airplane crash or
a nuclear disaster as the Seed Bank will, but to have
the capacity.
Dr. Elinor Breman (18:17):
Exactly. Anybody can do seed banking. And we have a
lot of partners who don't have regular electricity supply, but
they can still bank seeds to international standards and conserve
their flora and all of that hope and possibility for
their future.
Cate Blanchett (18:31):
Yeah.
King Charles (18:32):
But you would think that we try to encourage the
pharmaceutical sector to see that actually it's surely in their
interest to invest in the protection and enhancement and restoration
of this biodiversity from which so many actually of the
treatments we are looking for have already come from.
Dr. Elinor Breman (18:52):
Exactly.
King Charles (18:53):
So it's surely in their interest to do that. But one
of the greatest things I've discovered is there's only at the
moment the carbon credits market, which is not as good
as it could be. There's no biodiversity credits set up.
So this is being tried to be established now, because
that would revolutionize the opportunities for investment in the restoration of biodiversity.
Dr. Elinor Breman (19:14):
Definitely. Kew is involved in a lot of those conversations
as well around biodiversity credits and how we can ensure
that all of these large schemes under the current global
biodiversity framework to restore and maintain natural habitats don't do
any harm and actually enhance biodiversity rather than harming it
(19:38):
in tree planting schemes or others. So we need to
monitor that.
King Charles (19:41):
So the only way to do that is to make
sure we have ecosystem services payments.
Dr. Elinor Breman (19:45):
Exactly.
King Charles (19:46):
So you make the-
Dr. Elinor Breman (19:46):
It needs to be valuable.
King Charles (19:48):
You make the trees more valuable alive than dead.
Dr. Elinor Breman (19:50):
Dead. Yes.
King Charles (19:50):
As timber.
Dr. Elinor Breman (19:51):
Yes.
King Charles (19:51):
If they're particular species of it. That's why, again, I feel that agroforestry is such an
important and underutilized forgotten technique, which could make a dramatic
difference in restoring degraded land rapidly.
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:06):
We've seen that with some partners of ours in Mexico,
and the Veracruz state with the coffee plantations. It was
all kind of open and it used to be cloud
forest. And cloud forest, I think it's only less than
1% of Mexico.
King Charles (20:17):
What's cloud forest?
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:17):
It's forest which is at kind of high elevation usually.
King Charles (20:21):
Right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:21):
And then, it draws in its moisture from the cloud
rather than from rain. It's quite a remarkable system. But
we found some native species with working with local communities
that they want to propagate.
King Charles (20:34):
That's right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:34):
And they're using those as a shade over the coffee now.
King Charles (20:35):
That's right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:36):
And set up community nurseries. They get an income from
the nursery. They're growing the species that they are going
to have a use from, and it's producing better coffee.
King Charles (20:45):
Right.
Dr. Elinor Breman (20:45):
So you need to find those win- win- wins, don't you? And then it all happens.
King Charles (20:48):
But agro organisations are doing exactly that in Ethiopia. And they can now demonstrate that within five years
you can transform a degraded landscape into something that looks like a forest.
And instantly the biodiversity increases
Cate Blanchett (21:10):
Yeah. The only frustration for me about inaction on climate
change is that there's so many extraordinary initiatives right there ready to
be scaled up. There's a willingness there, but there's just,
there's not the direction of the funds.
King Charles (21:31):
And there's that lack of awareness too, as you were saying about the actual detail of all these things.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:32):
I know.
King Charles (21:32):
Let alone the role of pollinating insects.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:34):
I know we're always told to not have too complex
a message, but nature is complex. Ecosystems are very complex,
and every part needs to be there for it to
work. Yeah.
King Charles (21:45):
Because everything's interconnected. Wonderful. Thank you very much.
Cate Blanchett (21:48):
Thank you so much for making the time.
King Charles (21:50):
Not at all.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:50):
Yeah.
Cate Blanchett (21:51):
With us.
King Charles (21:51):
Well, I hope it helps.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:51):
It does.
King Charles (21:51):
It's so wonderful that you're doing so much to help.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:53):
It helps enormously.
Cate Blanchett (21:55):
But your example and your activity in this space have
been, they're legendary.
Dr. Elinor Breman (21:59):
World- leading.
Cate Blanchett (22:00):
So thank you.
King Charles (22:00):
You're kind to say so. I'm not sure how much it's achieved anyway.
Dr. Elinor Breman (22:04):
An awful lot.
King Charles (22:05):
We hope. Well, I'm very proud to be patron of Kew. That's a great thing.
Dr. Elinor Breman (22:07):
Well, thank you so much.
King Charles (22:10):
It does wonderful work.
Cate Blanchett (22:15):
That was His Majesty The King, a proud patron of
Kew and a remarkable voice with which to start this
story of the Millennium Seed Bank. And this is just
the beginning. From the grasslands of Southern England to the
humid landscapes of Thailand, the forests of Southern Australia and
even into outer space, in this series we will travel
(22:36):
far and wide. From visionary scientists to intrepid seed collectors,
we'll meet the extraordinary people safeguarding our planet as we
explore the past, the present, and the vital future of
the Millennium Seed Bank. I'm Cate Blanchett, and this is
Unearthed
(22:59):
your podcasts so you won't miss a moment. Until next
time, thanks for listening.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com