Environmentality. with Dr. Brendon Anthony

Environmentality. with Dr. Brendon Anthony is built on plain questions. Its titles ask what a biodigester is, what limnology is, what human composting is and, across six parts, what sustainable coffee is. Anthony takes some of those questions alone, in lecture mode, and puts others to guests who talk through their own work. He is an eager, curious interviewer who cuts in when a detail needs pinning down, as when he stops a guest to check whether a coffee quality score comes from the Specialty Coffee Association. The coffee series goes from tree to cup. Its horticulture installment is a solo lecture on the plant itself, and it goes into real detail. It traces arabica back to Ethiopian coffees and the Typica variety. It explains Bourbon as a sport, a natural mutation a grower spotted on one branch and propagated, and it names coffee leaf rust and coffee berry borer as threats to return to. Evie Smith, a researcher out of UC Davis, takes the global research episode into coffee leaf rust: how wind and infected farms nearby shape an outbreak, and why growers rotate their chemistries and strategies before the pest grows resistant. That episode ends practically, urging listeners toward direct trade or relationship coffee and a real conversation with the local roastery. The chemistry installment, with a guest named Sarah, takes on a quieter controversy. A cupping score, she explains, is just a number, and it says little about what a drinker actually tastes. The conversation also points to sustain.coffee, described as a repository of research abstracts from many fields, all linked around coffee. Away from coffee, one thread keeps returning: what happens to what gets left behind. An episode on human composting and research at Washington State University notes three licensed facilities in the state doing the work. It also widens into farming, with plant-derived herbicides that burn down weeds in half an hour but cost enough to push growers toward spot spraying, and a local grower's remark that he is an environmentalist who still needs tools. Dead plant residue, the guest explains, is the main food for the microorganisms whose job is to decompose it. The limnology episode turns to caffeine as a tracer, chosen because it comes only from humans. The biodigester episode, on dairy biodigesters and methane emissions, doubles as a reunion with Jeff Bishop, a friend from undergraduate botany labs. Their ribbing over who aced which test, and the host's admission that he later taught that very class, gives a fair sample of the show's humor. Greetings are exuberant and loose, and guests are thanked with evident warmth. What a listener gets is environmental science up close: the botany of a coffee tree, the chemistry behind its grade, and a frank look at where waste ends up.