Why are we talking about rhinos on a podcast about nuclear energy? Rhino poaching is threatening the survival of the species and fueling illegal trade networks. Now, there is hope for these creatures as new anti-poaching methods like The Rhisotope Project emerge.
James Larkin, director of the radiation and health physics unit at the University of the Witwatersrand and founder of The Rhisotope Project, joined Mary and Jordan to share how one conversation led him to develop an innovative method to fight back. He explains the global implications of rhino poaching, the criminal syndicates behind it, and how the project aims to protect the species using radiation.
Around 2019, I met two women who had a project going where they were injecting dyes and poison into the horn of the rhino. And they wanted to know, would it be possible to put radioactivity in it? I said no, because I'm quite keen to stay out of prison. I don't look good in orange. But it did plant the seed of an idea in my mind. And I thought, maybe if we could find the right level of activity that wouldn't harm the animal but could set off a sensor or something, we might be onto something.
Going from a background in science to wildlife preservation doesn’t seem like a normal transition, but it just goes to show the breadth of nuclear. But there are a lot of questions that come with this: How do you find the rhinos? How do you safely inject them? What is a rhino? Where do you get the isotopes? James answers some of those.
We make [the isotopes] ourselves. We import the appropriate compounds we take into the reactor. We got another colleague who did the very detailed calculations, how long we needed to put it into the reactor... So, we knew what we needed to put into the reactor, and we've been able to then utilize this in putting into the rhino horns.
So, we have a sense of how they safely create the isotopes to inject into the horns, but how will this actually prevent poaching? It’s not like a poacher is going to take the time to sit with the rhino, maybe give it a pet, then test its horn. James walks us through it.
They're out to just make money any way they can, so, we devalue the horn in the eyes of the end users. This is kind of a bittersweet situation because obviously we don't want the animal to be poached in the first case but if the horn is taken, we get that second bite of the cherry to know the animal's death hasn't been completely in vain. We’re putting smuggling routes under threat of detection because we've shown that it's now significantly easier to detect horn as it's moved along the chain.
This project obviously isn’t going to stop rhino poaching overnight, but in the long run, it can do a lot to minimize it. James says the Rhisotope Project has already started a pilot project with 20 rhinos at the Limpopo Rhino Orphanage to track any changes in behavior or horn growth. This episode is also part of his plan to get the word out that there are now rhinos with isotopes in their horns. The faster the word gets out, the faster folks know not to poach.
Jordan Houghton And I'm Jordan Houghton. Let's jump in.
Mary Carpenter Hey, Jordan.
Jordan Houghton Hey, Mary! And hello Fissionaries.
Mary Carpenter Hey, Fissionaries. Thanks for joining us today. I think you're going to love this conversation. It's—it might be the favorite topic we've covered so far on my end.
Jordan Houghton It's really, really different from anything else we've covered. Very excited to talk to James Larkin, who is with the Rhisotope Project, which is combining isotopes and rhinos.
Mary Carpenter Yeah, it's very cool. So, the Rhisotope Project is focused on stopping rhino poaching. And there's been a lot of different ideas to try and curb rhino poaching, which we all know is such a serious issue, and James will go into a bit more and share just how serious it is in the episode. But different ideas have come up over the years. Some people have thought about putting color into the rhino horns to make them unattractive for poachers. I know when I worked on Capitol Hill, people would try and get funding for, you know, more equipment for rangers to go out in the middle of the night, night vision goggles, things like that to help. But, you know, this is a new idea that they have. So, they want to inject radioisotopes into rhino horns and that will deter the poachers from wanting the horns. And such a—such a great idea. And, you know, an interesting new way for nuclear to help with conservation efforts.
Jordan Houghton I was absolutely fascinated to learn about The Rhisotope Project, was not anywhere on my radar, and I'm I think our listeners are really going to be blown away. He has an international effort in progress. He's working with academics, universities, and people all around the globe on this, and it is just so interesting to see how many people have come together to help protect rhinos. Ok, so I've never visited Africa, but Mary, I know you have, and you had a really incredible experience there.
Mary Carpenter Yeah! So, we went to Kenya two years ago, almost two years ago now. And I've always loved rhinos. And I really wanted to see a rhino, but, you know, they're very rare in Africa, in—or in the part of Kenya that we were in. We were looking for black rhinos, and, you know, every kind of camp you go to, they're like, don't get your hopes up, there's only 5000 black rhinos left in the whole world, so they're hard to spot. And, you know, they're kind of shy, they don't really like coming around. There's cars around and things like that, so don't get your hopes up. And the second camp we went to on the very first day, we were out driving, and our guide was like, oh my gosh, I think that's a rhino. And I was, like, panicking. And we get a little closer and we get a little closer and then all of a sudden this rhino, just like, is walking so slow, just eating some grass. We were the only people around. It was just us and—just me, my husband and our guide. And I, like, look up and I see him, and the rhino is just very calm. And we got to—we sat there for probably an hour just watching this rhino. I seriously cried, it was the coolest thing, I didn't know if we were going to get to see one. But, you know, it's just the animal is so big and beautiful and it's just, like, honestly breathtaking to see it in the wild and just to know how lucky we were to see one because a lot of people don't. It was really cool. And then we actually saw two more on that trip, which was absolutely insane.
Jordan Houghton No way!
Mary Carpenter Yeah. So, we saw three rhinos total, which was—we felt so lucky. And if you guys haven't had a chance to go on safari, I highly recommend going. And you know, it's—it's more than you can put into words. It's breathtaking to see these creatures in the wild in their natural habitats. And it's something I think everyone should try and do, because it really changes your perspective on how important it is to protect them and their environment. And it's—you can't describe it unless you see it in person. It's really cool.
Jordan Houghton Absolutely amazing. I got chills while you were telling that story. I think it's a great way to jump into our interview with James.
Mary Carpenter So today, we're honored to have Professor James Larkin with us. With a deep commitment to nuclear security education, Professor Larkin has shared his expertise globally, including as a past chairman of the International Atomic Energy Agency's International Nuclear Security Education Network. He's a fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine in the UK, a member of the Institute for Nuclear Materials Management in the US, and a founding member of the South African Radiation Protection Association. Currently, James is spearheading The Rhisotope Project, an organization using the power of radio isotopes to help save the rhinos. James, thanks so much for joining us on the podcast today.
James Larkin It's only my pleasure, and listening to the introduction, I don't hardly recognize myself. Thank you very much! Someone's been doing their homework.
Mary Carpenter Well, we gave like a little bit of an overview of what we want to hear from you. Tell our listeners a little bit about your background and your career and how you got to where you are today.
James Larkin So I was born in Kenya many, many years ago now, and then my family bounced backwards and forwards because my father was a veterinary surgeon. When he graduated from veterinary college in the U.K., he moved to East Africa, to Kenya. It's going to be a meeting inspector to start off with. At about a similar sort of time, my mother left in—well, no, she continued to be employed by MI5 and then moved to South Africa—to East Africa, in Kenya. And when my parents married, she joined Special Branch. So, we have two very varying backgrounds and I was born in Kenya, then we went back to the UK when I was about the age of one and then went back to Kenya when I was about the age of eight. So, I have very rose-tinted memories of living in Kenya and going to places like the Maasai Mara Game Reserve and camping there, and going to Tsavo National Park, and to Treetops. All of these, some of these iconic tourist destinations that people have heard about. And then in 1974, move back to the UK and continued my education in the UK. I went to university to sort of round out my education and I spent much of my time either on the rugby pitch or on the canal rowing rather than doing academic studies. And I came up with a moderate qualification in cell biology and then worked for myself for about ten years. In 1995, I was asked if I wanted to come out to South Africa to come and work for a friend of my father and working for a gentleman by the name of John Constantine. And he had a radiation protection business and he wanted someone with some practical skills working with heavy machinery, but a sort of science background. And so, he asked me if I wanted to come out, and I was only supposed to come out to South Africa for a couple of months and then go back to the UK, but somehow I forgot to go home. And from there, I was offered the opportunity to go and run a course in radiation protection at Wits University—because we never call it the University of the Witwatersrand, because not even I could pronounce it properly. And so there, I started working there in 1999 and ran various courses, particularly the course in radiation protection. And had you asked me five years ago, where do I see myself in five or ten years time, it certainly wouldn't have been working on trying to conserve and prevent poaching of rhino. Eventually. So, I mean, quietly working alone. And this was prior to COVID, doing a lot of international travel to these different countries, very different cultures, and going there to go and take part in some sort of educational process. And then COVID came along. And so all of that traveling came to a very shuddering halt, because here in South Africa, we had quite an extreme lockdown, certainly for the first couple of weeks. And so that very much gave me some time to sit and look at the walls and scratch my head. And then, you know, having—start think about this project. It came about because at around about 2019, I met two women who had a project going where they were injecting dyes and poison into the horn of the rhino. And they wanted to know, would it be possible to put radioactivity in it? I said no, because I'm quite keen to stay out of prison, I don't look good in orange. And so, from there, so I sort of said no, but it did, you know, plant the seeds of an idea in my mind because I understood, you know, I suppose having the knowledge about sort of what efforts globally have been done in nuclear security and what's been done to prevent nuclear terrorism. I realize that there's something like 11,000 installed radiation monitors around the world. And I thought, well, maybe if we could find the right level of activity, that wouldn't harm the animal but could set off a sensor that supports, or a hub or something like that, we might be onto something, because at the same time, you know, 99 percent of the world—he's very scared or at least misunderstands what radiation is. So that was my thought. Well, if we make something slightly radioactive, to them, people don't really want it. Because when you look at the background to the demand for horn, research has shown that it's, contrary to much Western popular belief, it's not as an aphrodisiac, nor actually is the biggest demand in traditional Chinese or Vietnamese medicine. But it is nowadays to give the horn, either carved or whole, as a gift to engender favor with your business colleagues, or to display on the mantelpiece in your house your fabulous wealth. Because horn is worth up to about 60,000 USD per kilogram. So—and a horn can weigh one, two, maybe in certain circumstances, three kilograms in weight. So you do the mathematics and realize how valuable in the eyes of some people the rhinoceros horn is, you know, exceeds the value of things like cocaine or gold or platinum, those sorts of things. But really, in the real world has no value. The only thing that has anything that needs a horn is a rhino. It's only the rhino really should value the horn is only into their snout. So, I kind of place myself in the middle of this web and I've sort of shorter emails to all around the world, to colleagues I've met through, mostly the nuclear security work I've done. And many of those people also have a background in radiation protection like myself, and so we could start talking and say, you know, what about this idea? And so, I ended up talking to a friend and colleague, a guy called Tom Johnson in—at Colorado State. And he, with his students at Colorado State, have a close working relationship with universities in Japan, where they've done research work looking at the effects of radiation on the wildlife around Fukushima. And, you know, got to talking and said, hey, Tom, what do you think about this idea? And some kind of surprise, he didn't turn around and say oh, god, that's a terrible idea. But he said, you know, this is something really rather interesting, you know, let's try and move it on. So, that gave me the start of the impetus, I suppose, around about 2020, something like that. And you know, from there, we've incrementally had to examine different ideas, look at various things as we're moving the whole idea forward. And so, you know, two weeks ago we were able to go to the US and finally test some, you know, fake horn in real life detector systems. We worked with the Customs and Border Protection people.
Jordan Houghton That's amazing.
James Larkin It's been fantastic. And, you know, the team that have brought themselves towards me, I think is almost the right way to it.
Jordan Houghton So, where do you get the isotopes?
James Larkin We make them ourselves. We import the appropriate compounds, we take them to the reactor. We got another colleague who did the very detailed calculations, how long we needed to put it into the reactor, because that’s a science in and of itself, you know, quite willingly, sort of did a very detailed calculation—set of calculations, it was, like, a ten page report. And it was just like, you know, here, I've done it for you. And so, we knew what we needed to put into the reactor and they made it, and we've been able to then utilize this in putting into the rhino horns. And likewise, our colleagues at the Rhino Orphanage. My—you know, the COO of the project, Jess Babbage, has been cultivating them for a while and talking to them. She had to use sort of nuclear science for herself because she's got a background in anthropology and—human anthropology, and has been this kind of ideal partner in this project and—speaking to these people because she's got a long and very well respected background in conservation.
Mary Carpenter Where's the Rhino Orphanage?
James Larkin It’s in an area called Limpopo.
Mary Carpenter Okay.
James Larkin Which is sort of the northern part of South Africa. And eventually, the gentleman who runs it, Ari Van Devita, so, it was almost sort of, like, when are you going to start? When are you going to start? I said, calm down, we've—you’ve got to allow us to finish doing, you know, important parts of the research about the doses of what quantities we've got to put into it. And so, again, you know, we haven't had to twist any arms or anything like that. The cooperation has been willingly given. And, you know, it's been fantastic to be able to work with these sorts of people, this whole thing is, you know, obviously, first do no harm to the—towards the animals. And so, you do that that basic calculations and then you do some very detailed computer modeling. But until you, you know, get to see in in life like a, you know—Kennedy Airport, hearing for the first time, the alarm going off as the truck drove through the detectors and we had the right sort of activities, it was a realistic set up, you know, hearing that alarm going off, that that very physical demonstration of the math and physics that you've done made it so very real.
Mary Carpenter So can I ask in that—so the premise of The Rhisotope Project is using radioisotopes and inserting them into the rhino horns. And I know you had mentioned some other folks had looked at dying rhino horns, you know, kind of adding color to make them less appealing, if you're using the radioisotope, can the poachers see it and understand that it's, you know, not just a pure horn or is it more for the, you know, later tracking it once it's been poached?
James Larkin The project works, then the idea works on about three different levels. First and foremost, it's to devalue rhino horn in the eyes of the end users. So, we know from research is done by various people that the target audience are the people who want, you know, rhino horn to be able to sort of put it into their whiskey or to demonstrate their fabulous wealth of—basically gentlemen of 40 or 50 years old, that sort of range, probably better educated than much of the population of China or Vietnam. You know, these are the people who've made significant wealth themselves and are aware of Fukushima, Chernobyl, things like that. So, the whole set of what we would call radiophobia is something they will have, but they don't understand what radiation is, what its effects are. And there's—a lot of research shows that people will radically overestimate the harm any particular dose will do to it, so they're not going to go and hunt their animals because rhino poaching, particularly ivory poaching to some extent as well, is organized by criminal syndicates. They put the—kind of the kingpin, the middleman will put together a poaching team. You'll have the shooter, you'll have the logistics guy and the guy, the x man. So, they will go out into the park or go poaching for between one and three weeks. They're out to just make money any way they can. So, we devalue the horn in the eyes of the end users. Secondly, then, if an animal's horn is taken, and this is kind of a bittersweet situation for me because obviously we don't want the animal to be poached in the first case. But if the horn is taken, then we get that second bite of the cherry to be able to—the animal's death hasn't been completely in vain. We are now putting the smuggling routes under threat of detection because we've shown that it's now significantly easier to detect horn as it's moved along the chain from Southern Africa to the Far East, because even if it's smuggled out of Southern Africa through Mombasa, Mozambique, through the DRC, it will still either go into a container, it will go onto—into an airline suitcase or something like that. And if the detectors don't work, and at one point, say in South Africa or Mozambique, they can be working in Malaysia, in Singapore, in Abu Dhabi, in Dubai, Qatar, places like that. All of these places have US systems, in fact, the ones that we tested at JFK. So that means that that's the second point, we push back on the horn poaching chain. And the third point is that we have a philanthropic and educational aspect to the whole project. So, we will engage with local populations around game farms. Particularly, we work with young women and schoolgirls because it's the women who, you know, are the backbone of the family.
Jordan Houghton So you did the testing, and I'm curious about what's next, but I'm also curious when you think you might actually be able to try it in a live rhino.
James Larkin Well, we've already started a pilot project, so 20 rhino, live rhino, are now radioactive, if you want. They have radio isotopes inserted into their horns. And this is at the Limpopo Rhino Orphanage. We are following those now until the end of December, so it's a sort of a six-month period where we’re looking to see if there's changes in behavior, changes in horn growth or anything like that. We don't predict that there will be from the modeling that we've done. At the beginning of next year, we'll dart about 10 of those 20 animals, we’ll take blood samples, we'll take other measurements as well. Look at the addition of the gross wellbeing and a visual inspection, a close visual inspection of the horn and things like that. And after that provided nothing prove untoward in the blood tests or anything else, we are then, if you like, open for business, we will then happily engage with stakeholders in the health and welfare who people who will want us to use this system on their animals. So, we start, you know, starting early next year.
Mary Carpenter Who decides what rhinos would participate?
James Larkin Many of the rhinos in South Africa are actually privately owned by private hands.
Mary Carpenter Oh, interesting.
James Larkin Unlike the rest of Africa and in fact, now in South Africa, there's probably more rhino in private hands than there are in in national parks, which for us is quite a good thing, is because then we can quietly chip away, if you like. We can work with one rhino owner and do their animals, go through the percentage of their animals, and then just quietly move on. You know, I see government organizations always that bit more loath to commit to something like this, which is obviously a very radical departure from what they’re used to at the moment. The whole idea is to be able to be able to—but with increasing a percentage of the number of animals on the farm, it's going to get to the point where the poachers say it's just not worth your while to even go onto that farm because we don't know how many of the animals have been treated. If they've taken the horn, they're going to get rid of it and it's going to go into the smuggling routes, which is, to my mind is, you know, then puts those smuggling routes at threat. And the research is shown and results are shown and findings are showing that, you know, this rhino horn in a container, a shipping container, there's almost always of illicit wildlife trafficking goods, other illicit goods there as well, all of which then are put at risk because if a detector goes off with support or a harbor or something like that, the whole container is moved to one side for what they call a secondary inspection, which generally means breaking the seal, the customs guys opening up and actually having a darn good rummage around inside to see what sets off their radiation detector. And they will then, if they're opening up a container and they find a rhino horn, then they're going to start looking rather closely at the rest of the contents of that of that suitcase or cargo or container.
Jordan Houghton What is your plan—or do you have one yet—for how you're going to spread the word and make it so poachers know that there are isotopes in rhino horns?
James Larkin Welcome to our plan, you're part of it.
Jordan Houghton Happy to help!
James Larkin It's a continual engagement with social media, with the press. You know, the power of social media nowadays is just growing and growing. But, you know, you journalists are all honorary members of the Rhisotope team, because that's how we're going to do it. It has to be working with well-placed individual young journalists who we need to cultivate, we need to talk to, we need to explain to them how the system works, what it is—what we're trying to do. And, you know, from the launch this time around, you have seen, you know, any number of publications in, you know, various different languages, even I know he's got to the Taipei news, but it's just that growing, growing, growing process of engaging with people who want to hear our story, I suppose, is how we do it.
Mary Carpenter You mentioned governments. I'm curious, is the South African government interested in this project, and are other African countries interested?
James Larkin Yeah. Look, we haven't spoken much to, you know, the South African government, we've not had a formal discussion with them yet. That will come in the fullness of time. The access, because of the years I spent in radiation protection education at the university, I've been quite privileged to sort of educate and at least talk to a number of the different senior members of various different regulatory authorities through much of Africa. So—because South Africa is a place where a lot of African students will come to do, you know, appropriate technical and scientific education. And so, it's been my privilege to be able to work with some of these, and I know some of these people are following us on LinkedIn and places like that. And just quietly watching to see what's going on, you know, places in Botswana, from Namibia, Zambia, all places where we, you know, hopefully in the near future we'll be able to go and do some work to be able to, you know, work on the populations of rhinos that are held there.
Jordan Houghton Do you see this being able to be used in other endangered species?
James Larkin Yes. And we're all kind of warming up that discussion on a number of different fronts. Got to have some very fruitful discussions with colleagues in the Netherlands to look at how we can devalue elephant ivory. I'm in the process of trying to find a way to get a pangolin carcass to Australia to do some ultra-high resolution scanning at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization. I have a synchrotron there, which is one of two in the world which is set up to do ultra high-level, high resolution scanning. If you think of it as CT scan, but do it—get ten times the resolution, so you get like ten times the information. And more recently had some very interesting discussions with one of the Brazilian government research organizations. They would like to sort of participate and find ways to look at things like toucans and Amazon alligators and then kind of somewhere down the line, we want to be able to look at things that—plants called cycads, which are prehistoric type plants, which were around in the dinosaur times and still exist, but for reasons best known to collectors, all of a sudden have become very desirable for collectors to own. And so, we're seeing them being sort of ripped out of the ground in various different parts of the bush found here and, you know, traded to unscrupulous gardeners. Wouldn't have thought that gardeners could be described as that sort, but there are, you know, people who are prepared to pay tens of thousands of dollars to own a specimen of a plant that's almost prehistoric. On elephants and other species, obviously, there are a number of behavioral, anatomical, and physiological issues that we need to consider very carefully to see whether it's a practical solution. You get to understand that these are really quite special animals. And, you know, you—when you take rhinos, you take elephants out of an ecosystem, you will see extraordinary and profound changes to that ecosystem, be it white rhinos or black rhinos. They, by removing these mega herbivores, you radically alter the foliage that is there, and then it continues to grow, and it becomes, I would say, stale or anything like that. But you'll find, begin to find, you know, you'll get one particular type of plant or bush beginning to dominate in a particular area. And by that domination, then you see a reduction in the biodiversity of the insects. And so, if you see a bio reduction in types of insects and types of small animals, types of amphibians, all are reduced, then you—if you get those prey species are reduced, then you're going to see a reduction in the number of different types of predators. So, you see this collapse of an ecosystem into a much smaller kind of group of animals that might exist in a particular area.
Mary Carpenter Can you share with our listeners just how dire the poaching situation is with rhinos right now?
James Larkin Sure. Up until about 2016, the numbers were just going up and up and up and up. It got to about, I think at one point it was three animals being poached a day. Then COVID came along and it dropped right down because it was very difficult to move around Southern Africa. Last year, I believe there was something like 220 animals poached this year up until about the beginning of July or August. Already there had been more than 230 animals poached, so it went up. It's dropped. And now the numbers are starting to go back up again as the world has opened up. Numbers of animals in the Kruger National Park—it's a piece of land the size of Israel—over 11 years, the population declined by 70 percent due to poaching alone. Yeah, animals, say, obviously rhinos as an adult, they don't have much in the way of predators, but as babies, you got hyena, you got lion, and you got strong, big male leopards. All are quite capable of killing a baby rhino. But that's, if you like, that's the ongoing natural rates of predation. That's when, you know, man comes along with high-powered rifles and things like that. Then, you know, the rates have just started to go back up again. So, yeah, no, it is—we thought we had it under control? No. I don't think the poaching is under control at all. I think it's going to go up again, unless we got some significant interventions, we could even see the vet numbers going up. Because there are those sick individuals in the world who would want to be the owner of this last rhino horn in the world.
Jordan Houghton If our listeners want to support the project, have ideas, I know you've mentioned you've crowdsourced a lot of this reaching out to people around the world, which I think is so incredible to have sort of like an international effort around this. What is the best way to support the project to reach out to you?
James Larkin I think the best way at the moment is to go to our website, which is rhisotope.org. Don’t need “www” in front of it at all, it's just rhisotope.org. And there are various different ways people can get involved. Obviously the one important thing is the donation of money. There is other ways, if you're a corporate, then you can go to, click through the universities, University Foundation, which is there's one in the US, there's one in the UK, as well in Australia, but if there are corporates who want to give then, there is the appropriate documentation which can be produced for the corporations for those types of donations. But if an individual wants to go through the PayPal portal, then please do so.
Mary Carpenter You—earlier, you mentioned that rhinos have different personalities. Do you have a favorite rhino you've met?
James Larkin Oh, I think—there's a rhino, he was in the Eastern Cape. He's been moved to another game farm as part of a set of genetics, one called Denver. And he was—he and another one called Eagle, were the two rhinos we start—this is where our journey started, where we did some initial work putting stable isotopes into the horns to see if there was movement of material at the horn. And somehow, he's got a kind of quiet nature, we always looked after his younger sisters and things like that. He's grown into be quite a handsome lad now. And I somehow, it just sort of tickles me that we have that one called, Denver, he's you know—if you look at a picture of him from right in front, you know this this rhino hasn't missed a meal in his life. He's almost a nice, perfect circle, which is a good, good, healthy shape for a good, you know, male rhino.
Mary Carpenter We've been asking everyone this season their favorite binge watch show.
James Larkin What program have I binge watched? It was The Gentlemen, but then there was one or two other, like—yeah. And that was the last one which, kind of, I thoroughly enjoyed. So, kind of gives you the background of where I've come from, if you understand that sort of sense of humors.
Mary Carpenter Well, we appreciate everything you're doing with The Rhisotope Project, and I really appreciate you coming to talk about it, and hopefully we can help share the word.
James Larkin Please do!
Mary Carpenter Well, that was a really cool conversation. I'm glad James shared how listeners can get involved with The Rhisotope Project.
Jordan Houghton Yes, absolutely. If you're not following them on social media, go for it. TikTok, their website is full of really great information as well, so definitely follow up if you're interested in getting involved. Have you watched The Gentlemen that he mentioned?
Mary Carpenter No, I haven't watched that yet, have you?
Jordan Houghton No. I'm not—no. I—it's great, I'm getting new things to watch, but I feel like I'm behind. I need one of our guests say they've watched Emily in Paris.
Mary Carpenter Which I am right now and I'm loving the season, as always.
Jordan Houghton Just finished watching it, yes.
Mary Carpenter You finished the whole thing? I haven't finished yet.
Jordan Houghton I did. I'm not going to spoil the ending, but there's it's interesting, there could be a seismic shift happening.
Mary Carpenter Oh, well I just saw it got renewed for season five, so I'm here for that.
Jordan Houghton Excellent. Well, James, amazing conversation. We will have to have him back at some point to give us an update once they get further along in this project and hear how things are going. Just absolutely incredible, incredible work and use of nuclear.
Mary Carpenter Yeah, and any listeners, if you guys get involved with The Rhisotope Project or any other interesting conservation efforts, we love to know, so, you know, leave a message or follow us on socials and let us know. Yeah, we're—we’re interested to see how you guys engage with this episode, and if you enjoyed the show, spread the podcast by subscribing on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen and don't forget to leave a comment and let us know your thoughts on the episode. Thanks for listening!
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