Behind The Scenes

of Nature Match Cuts – The Podcast Reconnecting You With Nature

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“Every kid starts out as a natural-born scientist, and then we beat it out of them. A few trickle through the system with their wonder and enthusiasm for science intact.”

Carl Sagan

About me

When I was a child, I knew exactly what profession I wanted to take up:

– breeding „pyjama beetles“ under my bed,
– translating the colourful stories that butterflies told me,
– being a scientist who talks to animals and plants and meets alien persons under a stone of an old dry stone wall.

Long before school, I knew my future profession by heart: I wanted to become a specialist for ladybugs and their friends. I was sure that scientists could talk to all animals, plants and even rocks by learning their language. I even started to train it.
Under my bed – where else, used jam jars with greens contained the red larvae of „pyjama beetles“. That is what I called my beautiful yellow-black striped, knobbly friends aka Colorado potato beetles.

I had diligently researched: If I found the golden-yellow eggs on my neighbour’s potato plants, the larvae would probably eat these leaves. And where else but on the neighbour’s field would the adult beetles enjoy their freedom!

There was also author’s work to do. Butterflies told me fascinating stories in colours, but the adults didn’t understand them. Therefore, I had to write them down in colours …
But what can you do, if you haven’t learnt writing yet and a graphite pencil is not coloured enough?

I filled my coloured wax crayons into a light bulb (!) box to make them glow. And invented a secret writing. The adults laughed at the weird child, and it took me decades to learn about my talent: I am a synaesthete and can indeed hear the colours of butterflies. There is even a technical term for my childhood scribbling: asemic writing. It is used in art because it looks like writing but contains no real letters.

My first classroom was a loose rock on a dry stone wall where I met interesting alien persons. Every time I lifted the rock, I was on a different planet with hard-working ant people, funny pill-bugs, who could roll into a ball when disturbed. Some people were wet and slimy, and some were so proud of their houses that they carried them on their backs. I lived in a cosmos of awe.

Later I interrupted these meetings as a journalist and book author by interviewing Homo sapiens. I wrote stories like a well-behaved adult, but never lost my love for nature.

Well, here I am! Child-like as ever when I talk to animals and plants.
And a writer and journalist who still perceives texts in colours, light and sounds.

Join me as I share with you stories about the fascinating „otherworlds“ of the more-than-human beings as well as amazing knowledge from science and cultural heritage! You like to change your perspective? Come to this podcast of everyday marvels of wonder and awe!

Like a hand, roots reach between plants around a stone block.
Like a hand, roots reach between plants around a stone block.

What is a Match Cut?

Match cuts are a special cut technique for transitions in audio and video. Perhaps you may know one of the most famous match cuts of film history.

Somewhere in space, there is a planet in primaeval time. Two hordes of apes are fighting over a water hole. The leader of one group reclaims control of the water. The other one looks at a big bone and back to that reclaimer.

– Moments of watching and hesitating. –

Suddenly this ape grabs the bone and uses it as a weapon. After a brutal fight, he triumphs and tosses the bone into the air. The camera shows the bone whirling around its axis in the sky.

— Match Cut. —

A moment later, the bone is a satellite in the cosmos of the Anthropocene, built by apes called Homo sapiens.
This unforgettable match cut from bone to satellite comes from Stanley Kubrick’s „2001. A Space Odyssey“.

Match cuts are far more than simple transitions: they build meaning and a relationship between two shots. They engage you on a deeper level and inspire you to think.
Whether a match cut connects scenes, times or locations, it has an emotional momentum revealing deeper relations and correlations. Match cuts connect the unexpected. Therefore, Nature Match Cuts is the podcast designed to reconnect you with nature.