Advertise on podcast: Second Nature

Why aren’t more people choosing sustainable products? And what would make them change their minds? Leo Rayman, founder of EdenLab and former Grey London CEO, joins Rich Stockdale on Second Nature to explore sustainable business, consumer behaviour, creativity and the commercial realities of the climate transition. From making train travel work for football fans to removing the hassle from heat pumps and home energy, Leo explains why better products, simpler experiences and stronger business models matter. They also discuss leaving a successful corporate career, the changing language of sustainability, AI, future careers and what it takes to build a company with ambitions that stretch beyond its founder’s lifetime.

What if six months of work could be completed in a single afternoon? And what if that's only the beginning? Artificial intelligence is fundamentally changing the economics of business. The teams we need, the systems we build, the decisions we make and the speed at which we can turn ideas into reality. Tom George, Head of Technology at Oxygen Intelligence, joins Rich Stockdale to explore what business leaders need to understand about the AI revolution. Having worked with global giants including Volkswagen, Rio Tinto and BHP, Tom has seen first-hand how the world's largest organisations operate. Now, he's using AI, automation and emerging technology to challenge almost everything we thought we knew about building a successful company. From autonomous AI agents and the democratisation of software development to cybersecurity, intellectual property and the risks of handing over control, this is a conversation about the extraordinary opportunities AI creates, the mistakes businesses cannot afford to make, and why the next industrial revolution might happen in months rather than generations.

Five years ago, Dr Rich Stockdale set out to build something most people thought was impossible. Today, Oxygen Conservation has grown into an extraordinary team of 50, managing more than 50,000 acres of land, transforming landscapes across Britain and building a business with ambitions that extend far beyond conservation as we know it. For the 200th episode of Second Nature, Rich returns to the guest seat, interviewed by Elle Steers, Head of Storytelling, in front of the entire Oxygen Conservation team at Invergeldie in Scotland. From building a high-performance team of 50 to revolutionising natural capital, rewilding and nature finance, Rich reflects on the decisions, people and ambitions that have shaped the business. But the most extraordinary part might still be ahead. With AI transforming environmental intelligence, plans to expand into Europe and the US, and an ambition to redefine the relationship between private capital and nature restoration, the question is no longer whether the impossible can be achieved. It's how much further we can go.

How do you turn ambitious ideas for nature into investment opportunities at scale? From helping establish Oxygen Conservation over five years ago to becoming Managing Director of Oxygen Capital, George Pawley has been part of the journey from day one. In this special episode of Second Nature, George joins Dr Rich Stockdale to share the stories behind some of Oxygen's biggest deals, the extraordinary people who have shaped the business, and what it really takes to turn ambitious ideas into reality. From navigating complex negotiations to unlocking institutional investment in nature, they explore the opportunities ahead and why the most exciting chapter of Oxygen Capital is only just beginning.

Can AI transform how we understand, value and restore nature? Dr Rich Stockdale is joined by Chris Winter, newly appointed Managing Director of Oxygen Intelligence, to explore the intersection of artificial intelligence, technology and natural capital. From world-record carbon credit prices and AI-powered landscape analysis to drones, LiDAR and digital twins of individual trees, they reveal the technology Oxygen has spent five years quietly building. Discover how Oxygen Intelligence is combining world-leading natural capital expertise with pioneering technology to unlock investment, accelerate restoration and scale conservation around the world.

Buying land is one thing. Transforming it is something entirely different. As Oxygen Conservation enters its next chapter, Fiona Milden steps into the role of Managing Director, responsible for turning some of the UK's most ambitious natural capital projects into reality. From woodland creation and peatland restoration to estate management, leadership and navigating extreme weather, the challenge is no longer simply imagining what conservation could achieve. It's delivering it. Rich Stockdale and Fiona explore what happens when the plans finally leave the page, the reality of leading a rapidly growing conservation business, and the extraordinary responsibility of managing landscapes, people and projects at scale. Including the inside story of a devastating Scottish wildfire that brought the realities of conservation leadership into sharp focus.

Dr Manuel Piñuela is CEO and co-founder of Cultivo, the natural capital company approaching 2 million acres across North America. His argument is deceptively simple: take degraded landscapes, understand where the economic and ecological upside lies, regenerate them — and build something institutional capital can actually invest in.  Rich and Manuel get into the reality behind that idea: natural capital, AI, data, institutional investment, regenerative agriculture, carbon, biodiversity, entrepreneurship and climate resilience. They also explore why Cultivo is moving from an asset-light model towards land ownership, why Manuel keeps a database of every mistake he's made, and whether AI could now compress a four-year PhD into twelve months. Perhaps the bigger question is whether we have been looking at degraded land the wrong way entirely.

We ask an extraordinary amount of Britain's countryside. Produce our food. Restore nature. Store carbon. Hold floodwater. Build houses. Generate energy. Create jobs. Give people access. And, somehow, remain completely unchanged. Gavin Lane, President of the Country Land and Business Association, and Eliza Ecclestone, Vice President, were two of the most engaging people we've had around the Second Nature table. Gavin farms around 1,200 acres in Norfolk alongside diversified family businesses; Eliza manages the 3,000-acre St Clere Estate in Kent. Both live the complexity they're talking about. This conversation made me think again about something we've discussed repeatedly on Second Nature: land use isn't binary. Farming versus nature. Development versus conservation. Public access versus private ownership. Food security versus natural capital. The people actually managing Britain's land rarely have the luxury of thinking in those terms. As Gavin puts it, the question is often the right thing, in the right place, at the right scale and the right time. The CLA represents 26,000 farmers, landowners and rural businesses. This is a conversation about what those people actually do, and why Britain's rural economy might be considerably more entrepreneurial, innovative and important than the caricature suggests.

AI could be one of the most powerful tools we've ever had for nature. It could also make the problem considerably worse. Live from New York Climate Week, Rich Stockdale is joined by Anna Lerner, CEO of Climate Collective; Sheila Oviedo, Head of Climate and Nature Products at S&P Global; and Danan Margason, CEO of Aarden AI, to ask a deceptively simple question: will AI ultimately be positive or negative for nature? They get into what AI is already changing — climate forecasting, land investment, conservation, insurance, talent and decision-making — before confronting the uncomfortable bit: data centres, water, energy and what happens if AI accelerates an economy that still hasn't priced nature properly. The technology is moving extraordinarily quickly. The bigger question is whether we can point it in the right direction.

Rich Stockdale has given away more copies of Crickonomics than any other book. Not because he is obsessed with cricket, although that helps, but because he thinks it might secretly be one of the best business books ever written. Tim Wigmore has spent his career using statistics, economics, history and brilliant writing to understand why cricket actually works. What followed became a conversation about far more than sport: Moneyball for land, why data can make coaches worse, why unconventional talent gets systematically undervalued, why attacking strategies outperform safe ones, and what happens when AI gives everyone access to the same information. Then there is writing itself. Tim writes to reveal what he doesn't yet know. Rich writes because speaking can produce a clever answer, but writing forces him to discover whether he actually believes it. Two very different brains arriving at essentially the same conclusion: information isn't intelligence until you've done the hard work of thinking about it.

What if the most valuable person in a rugby team isn’t on the pitch? Sam Larner has spent years pulling apart professional rugby through data. And the numbers expose some uncomfortable truths: teams overpay for experience, coaches repeatedly recruit the same profiles, unconventional players are systematically undervalued, and sometimes the difference between winning and losing is buried among 50,000 data points nobody in the stands will ever see. But this conversation goes much further than rugby. It’s about building high-performance teams. When should you trust data over instinct? How much is one superstar actually worth? How do you give people enough freedom to make decisions under pressure? And why might the teams willing to look stupid be the ones with the biggest competitive advantage?

Impact investing has spent years fighting for a tiny slice of institutional portfolios. Nadia Nikolova thinks that is the wrong fight. As CEO of ResponsAbility, managing almost $6 billion across emerging markets, Nadia sits at the intersection of institutional capital, climate, sustainable food and financial inclusion. She explains why impact investments should compete for the same 95% of portfolios as everything else, and why the industry needs better data, ratings, scale and replicability to get there. But the conversation goes much further. From growing up during Bulgaria's hyperinflation to watching capital transform nations, from blended finance and the $150m pension fund investment that marked a major milestone for ResponsAbility, to AI potentially creating a "missing generation" of workers and robotics threatening the labour-cost advantage of emerging markets. The question running through it all: what happens when capital starts pricing the future properly?

For years, the nature sector built projects first and asked where the money would come from later. Cain Blythe thinks that has to change. From the first major investment into Broughton Sanctuary to Credit Nature's expansion across Europe, Africa and New Zealand, the conversation is finally moving beyond good intentions. Where is the demand? Who is going to buy? What return can nature generate? And how do you build a market that can move enough money, fast enough? We get into why the sector still struggles to sell, why distribution could be the biggest unlock, how AI could create an entirely new class of nature investors, and why Cain's next book argues that the more we tame the world around us, the more afraid we become.

Nature is moving from environmental obligation to financial opportunity. But what does it actually take to turn biodiversity, habitat and ecosystem services into something institutional capital can invest in? Nath Curtis and Ben Stansfield have spent two decades watching renewable energy evolve from a new, uncertain industry into an investable infrastructure market. Now they are seeing many of the same patterns emerge in natural capital: from BNG and habitat banks to regulation, offtake contracts and the structures needed to bring serious institutional money into nature. But there are still some big questions. Can government accelerate the market without killing it? Can AI replace parts of professional services without destroying the human expertise clients actually pay for? And what happens when nature becomes a genuinely investable asset class?

For years, the environmental movement told us to be afraid of the future. Tom Crowther thinks that story has run its course. From discovering 3 trillion trees on Earth to watching his trillion-tree research explode into a global movement, and then become one of the most criticised ideas in environmental science, Tom has seen what happens when a scientific idea escapes the lab. He talks about the backlash, the mistakes, the lessons, and why nature is finally becoming part of the economic and political conversation. But the most interesting part of Tom's story isn't scientific. At 26, he survived a devastating stroke that changed his relationship with his own mind, sent him through two years of depression, and ultimately changed how he thinks about the future. Now, through Restor, he is watching restoration scale through a different kind of feedback loop, one where healthier nature improves people's livelihoods, which creates more incentive for nature to recover. He says 172 million hectares are already part of that story.