Cycling Europe

For three weeks in June, we cycled from Genoa, Italy to Gothenburg, Sweden. In total that amounts to nearly 2100 km. A long trip for sure, but one in which we were able to see a huge portion of Europe. Along the way, we made a few species profiles and updates. Here are the highlights.

Video Update #1 - Italy
Italy was extremely cool. We started the trip on the coast and immediately went over the Appenine mountains. From there we cycled the flat rice paddy fields near Milan. Soon though, we hit the Alps!  All of Italy, only took us 3 days to bike through.



Our first species profile: Brassica oleracea ...

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Video Update #2 - Switzerland

Switzerland was one of the most beautiful that we've ever seen and definitely the highlight of our trip through  Europe. Of particular interest was the huge mountain passes, like Gothard Pass in southern Switzerland.



Video Update #3 - Germany

At some stage, the entire trip started to take a toll on everyone. I made this video update to help show what it was really like on the trip. We're not super-human, but we do like telling it the way it was. In this case, it was a difficult section of the trip, accompanied by a lot of rain and cold conditions.

Flying to Europe

The backpack is the way to travel with a baby!

Wicked Plants - Weeds of Mass Destruction

My name is Rob Nelson, and I've been interested in marine science my whole life. Fish were my world. However, sometime in college I remember thinking that I know nothing about plants. They became one of my newfound passions, leading me to film and document them for over 10 years now. 

I can tell you that there are some amazing plants in this world. In the plant kingdom, most of us imagine passive green leafy-beings. I know I did. Not many of us think of them as invaders, murderers or traps. Yet, the plant kingdom contains just as many killers and oddities as one can find in the animal kingdom. In fact, I'd probably argue there are more. You see, plants can't move, so they only defense is in the toxins they produce. While I want to profile all different types of this world's wicked plants, I think we need to start simple. In this week's science podcast, we've started by profiling the invasive plants...



I made an entire webpage about this of course. Check out our page on the Top Ten Most Unusual and Wicked Plants. 

Caught in a Tornado

A couple years ago, when we were filming our middle grades science series for Pearson Publishing, Haley and I were tracking tornadoes with storm chasers in Oklahoma. After a month of driving countless miles through the plains, we still hadn't really seen a good twister. So, we took a week off. I wasn't checking the weather and decided to go for a nice little jog at my parents house in Dallas. Low and behold, the tornado sirens started going off. I looked up and there was rotation in the clouds! I ran into the house, grabbed the camera and took off with Haley to look for a tornado. Unfortunately, we didn't read it quite right and got stuck in the middle of the twister. Here is this week's podcast, that talks about what each level of tornado damage actually means.



And if you're still interested in this, you should check out the unedited Flower Mound tornado footage, describing exactly what happened.

The First Year of Parenthood

In the last year and 8 months, I feel that I've had to quickly adapt to life as a parent. Now, don't get me wrong, I've always thought I'd probably have kids. I just never thought much about the day it would come. In fact, our first kid, August Falcon Axil, came as a surprise when Haley took a pregnancy test during one of our Untamed Science shoots. She wasn't feeling all that great and low and behold, we found the answer!

August enjoying his first cake!

Since the day in October of 2010 that we found out, we've been through all the stages of pregnancy, and the whole first year of being parents. Let me just say, it made my life much more difficult. I wouldn't want to do it without him though. We bought a house, fixed it up, rebuilt our studio, and spent countless hours awake to a crying baby. But, every-time I look at him he makes me laugh. 

No longer am I the same self-guided person. Now I have a family and I'm really starting to like the fact that I'm a Dad!  I think I can really get used to it. I feel I have a lot to share. Here is a short video I made for Haley and August over the course of the last year, that I think recaps the whole experience well!

Conservation in the Deep Sea

If you think about it for a second, the majority of livable space on the planet is actually found in the deep sea. If you've ever watched a documentary about the deep sea, you've probably also heard a scientist exclaim that we know little about it. I'm sure James Cameron would agree, given he's put the deep sea back in the news as of late.

Recently, we were able to take a trip to the lightless zones of the ocean in a home-made sub. On the trip, we passed a drifting fishing net (something that if they got tangled in, they wouldn't be around today for this podcast). This fishing net was the inspiration for this week's podcast on ocean conservation.

In this episode, Haley explains the main threats to the deep sea, with the largest problem now being ocean trawling. Hopefully, this sheds a bit of light to a problem that seems not well understood by much of the public.



In addition, we actually have really great page on the deep sea with two other great videos (our submersible video and the six gill shark piece).http://www.untamedscience.com/biology/world-biomes/deep-sea-biome

Baby August's First Snake

We wanted to give August an early chance to not hate snakes. I think it worked. I just hope the snake doesn't start to hate August.