Marc Finnell
speaker
240 appearances
2 recordings
1 series
first heard Jun 2026
last heard 28 Jun
Marc Finnell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 2.
Appearances
And no one saw it coming.
Say hello to Luke Keogh.
He's a curator and historian with one of the biggest smiles I've ever seen on somebody with a PhD.
And one plant in particular has cropped up a lot in Luke's work.
The leaves are delicate, almost like lace.
And back in Victorian England, this particular plant was associated with clean air and health because, you know, they didn't have much of that.
And thus this particular plant became a status symbol.
Which plant am I talking about?
So if you, if you want ferns, you have to go get them.
And the problem with that is that often ferns are very far away.
Uh, out of curiosity, when you go and try and get ferns from a far away place on a boat, how at this point was it going for people?
And so what were the sorts of...
ways in which people were trying to transport plants?
Oh, there were lots of them.
And so into this story steps a very unlikely inventor.
Nathaniel Bagshaw Ward is, if you go through his CV to this point, none of it really screams like person who would rewrite the future of the British empire with an invention, but he he's a, he's a doctor, right?
Nathaniel Ward isn't just a doctor and a naturalist.
This guy's Rolodex is huge.
He's incredibly well connected.
Now, in Victorian England, having your home packed with rare plants was actually quite trendy.
Showing 121–140 of 240 · page 7 of 12
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