Peter Bernhardt
speaker
140 appearances
3 recordings
1 series
first heard Jul 2026
last heard 21 Aug
Peter Bernhardt’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 — 3 in all, peaking in Aug 2026 with 2.
Appearances
The Science Show · Looking inside cells, and how seals hear so well underwater · 31 Jul 2026
podcast
At 9 a.m., the veiled polypore is digesting rotting tree limbs only to be attacked by wood-boring beetles, which are eaten in turn by white-headed woodpeckers.
At 7 p.m., my favorite chapter, a truffle is gobbled up by a badger spreading the spores in her poop while American red squirrels collect and store the fruiting bodies of at least 89 species of fungi.
The author also notes those times when people and fungi interact.
By 1 p.m., we descend into the limestone caves of France as cheesemakers refine sheep's milk with penicillium, as they have since the 11th century.
Unfortunately, the fungal clone that gives us Roquefort is almost infertile, has accumulated genetic defects, and needs to be revived somehow.
Furthermore, our tastes may change over centuries.
The golden chanterelle is introduced at 11 a.m., and we learn that the people of Sweden once viewed it with disgust.
It was not until 1818 that King Karl IV brought his love of French cuisine to the throne, and in 1860, the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences commissioned its first book on edible mushrooms.
Despite the marriage of royalty to mycology, the author suggests that it wasn't until the 20th century that chanterelles finally lost their lowly status as famine foods.
And no, the amanita that ended three Australian lives doesn't get an hour, but at 3 a.m.
we meet the devil's bolete, a toxic rarity that may be mistaken for the beloved and edible Italian porcino.
Pulio makes an important point that it's easy to misidentify mushrooms as their caps continue to develop as they age, changing shapes, colors, skin coverings, and the way they present their spore bodies.
What if your specimen remains uncertain?
Go to 7 a.m.
For the last century, the law-abiding citizens of Switzerland have taken their baskets of wild fungi to certified mushroom inspectors.
If this neatly organized and designed book has any real flaws, I think it could have used a glossary.
By the time I was halfway through the text, I began forgetting the meaning of words defined previously on earlier pages.
That's embarrassing when you consider I taught a general botany course for 30 years, delivering four 65-minute annual lectures on the kingdom fungi.
Yes, I once made my students make lamellae, conidia, sclerotia, and gleba part of their classroom vocabulary.
If the protection of biodiversity is so important in modern Australia, maybe we all need to learn them.
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