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CBC’s The Nature of Things has some highlights in its 63rd year of broadcasting.
There will be no more David Suzuki, as he retired last year. And, for the first time, the world’s longest-running science and nature TV show will be co-hosted by Toronto’s Anthony Morgan and David’s daughter Victoria’s Sarika Cullis-Suzuki.
Morgan, who has presented science for the Discovery Channel, CBC and Vice, and is artistic director of the educational and media company Science Everywhere, presented the new season on January 4. Marine biologist and environmentalist Cullis-Suzuki’s first episode of the year is January 11 at nine p. m.
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“It’s been a very attractive year. Dad quit after 44 years of working on The Nature of Things. He did it before I was born,” said Cullis-Suzuki, a 40-year-old mother of three young children. What a strange feeling now to settle for this position. It’s pretty emotional because I can’t believe it doesn’t. That’s all I’ve noticed it does.
“I saw through him what work and duty entails. . . But now it’s very different for me to be there.
Cullis-Suzuki and Morgan will share hosting duties and join forces for a few episodes. They will also be co-hosts of the online short film series The Nature of Things 101.
The show’s executive producer, Sue Dando, said she spent a year auditioning for co-host positions. The main needs were for presenters to be science communicators with a strong clinical background.
“I think knowing how to make complicated science accessible is Job 1,” said Dando. “Interesting and relevant is really what we strive to do all the time.
“If we can bring a sense of wonder and respect to clinical or global herbal invention, that’s fabulous. “
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Dando has been with The Nature of Things for 10 years and has worked intensively with Cullis-Suzuki’s father. She says the popularity of the Suzuki call is an advantage and adds that David Suzuki has nothing to do with locating new presenters.
“I think for a lot of Canadian viewers who grew up with David Suzuki and saw his family on the air, because we were filming in their homes and the family was there, I think there’s a certain familiarity with David Suzuki there. In fact, he makes a few small appearances in some upcoming pieces that have compatibility very naturally.
Cullis-Suzuki, who has a Ph. D. With a degree in marine biology, he grew up looking at his father’s paintings and seeing the power that the media can have when it comes to communicating big issues like the weather.
“At the end of my PhD I was OK, I love science. But it takes forever, out of necessity. … I felt the urgency of the problems our world is facing was too immediate. So that’s when I decided I am going to pause on the science and I want to really lean into the media stuff,” Cullis-Suzuki said recently from her home in Victoria.
“So, for me, it’s a wonderful union between two of my passions, which are science and communication. Then, when you upload the private connection, it takes on a wonderful meaning. It’s a dream. “
A dream that also, in a smiling way and backwards, replicated the early years of Cullis-Suzuki, when his father traveled a lot.
“It’s a fun time to come full circle because when I’m gone, my dad tries to come and stay with my kids. It’s a cool cycle,” Cullis-Suzuki said. “It’s a great blessing.
“My mom used to hug him all the time and now she has a little bit of insight. He said anything the other day. She said motherhood is about planning. It was fun. “
When asked about the dynamic, Suzuki, now 87, who took a break to watch his grandchildren talk over Zoom, laughed and nodded knowingly.
“Well, it’s the most productive task I’ve ever had. I woke up this morning, for example, at 6:30 a. m. And I said, Oh my God, I can’t make you the same breakfast,” Suzuki said. I’m tormenting myself over that damn breakfast, which is the most boring meal of the day. But the most vital, isn’t it?
Cullis-Suzuki has directed several episodes of The Nature of Things over the past two decades, and added a few along with his father. She says her most productive piece of advice is to “be yourself and listen. “
She says her father also introduced her to his wisdom, but she hasn’t realized it yet.
“He told me to learn to nap. One of the things I have always noticed about him is he can always fall asleep, no matter what. Even if it was just a five-minute bus ride from one location to the next, he would nap then wake up and go straight into his interview,” said Cullis-Suzuki. “I wish I had that skill.”
The 2024 season of The Nature of Things kicks off with the documentary presented by Cullis-Suzuki Mystery of the Walking Whales. Although Cullis-Suzuki says fish is more “his thing,” the oceans in general have been his main companion.
“I don’t forget that when Sarika was nine years old, she spent as much time as she could in the ocean, up to her hips, hunting in the water with two small nets, one in each hand. And both in one hand. Every once in a while, it would melt and she would have something in the net,” said Sarika’s mother, Tara Cullis-Suzuki. “He told David and me, ‘Mom and Dad, when I grow up, I’m going to be a marine biologist and you can be my assistants. ‘”
“She’s been curious about all things ocean. “
The mystery of the walking whales transports the audience 50 million years back to the days when whales walked on land, as evidenced by the fossil-rich Valley of the Whales. It is in the domain of Wadi El-Rayan in the Fayoum Desert in Egypt.
“Isn’t it a journey? I thought it was amazing,” Cullis-Suzuki said of the desert filled with whale fossils. “It’s literally hard to visualize evolution, but what’s appealing is seeing those skeletons up close and personal. Because you can really believe that this happens in front of your eyes. You can see the transitional skeletons and it literally brings them to life.
The laugh of running in The Nature of Things, says Cullis-Suzuki, is literally getting your hands dirty on trips like the one in Egypt.
“A lot of studies are done on a computer. And you can’t really get attached to your pet, to your body, whatever it is that you’re studying. It was a question of: Well, there’s all those numbers and statistics that you know. We go back 43 million years and all that, and then there’s the very genuine sense of status in a desert and substate that was once the back of the sea and seeing the evidence all around you.
“That’s why I am so incredibly fortunate. Because it is one thing to read that in a scientific paper. It is completely different to be standing there and being part of that history.”
dgee@postmedia. com
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