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Seeds review: A great podcast about seed-bank scientists under siege

An excellent new podcast with Nina Sosanya sees food scientists in Leningrad struggling against starvation and pseudoscience, and resonates for today's world

By Bethan Ackerley

7 October 2020

New Scientist. Science news and long reads from expert journalists, covering developments in science, technology, health and the environment on the website and the magazine.

Seeds is a multilayered show with the problem of feeding people at its heart

Gemma Hattersley

Seeds
No Stone Theatre

LIKE many projects, preparations for Seeds of Hope, the latest stage production from No Stone Theatre, were cut short by the pandemic. Inspired by Nikolai Vavilov, the Soviet agronomist who created the first global seed bank, the play has been revived as a podcast series and renamed Seeds.

You wouldn’t notice that the audio drama has been adapted, mind, because it is a perfect fit for this medium – and is imbued with surprising new resonances.

The main plot follows…

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