This year we’re aiming for a 100% increase in the number of speakers we provide to our membership, for a total of four webinars in 2025. In addition to increasing the number of webinars, we are focused on providing content that is engaging, fun and enjoyable for our members.
Sure. I can tell you that our first speaker of the year will be Joey Santore. Those that know Joey’s podcast, YouTube Channel or TV Show are already smiling. For those that are unfamiliar with Joey Santore, I can tell you that he’s been called a vigilante botanist and a punk rock botanist. Personally, I think of Joey Santore as a rock star celebrity botanist.
Definitely! I first became a Joey Santore fan after watching him on the popular YouTube channel WIRED. WIRED has some big-name celebrities (such as Anna Kendrick and Selena Gomez), politicians (such as Kamala Harris) and scientists (such as theoretical physicist Brian Greene), and Joey Santore was their botanist of choice. I was deeply impressed by how Joey makes botany fun to think about and approachable in a way that few people can. During the video I kept thinking it would be great to have Joey as a speaker at NANPS, but he has a huge fan following so I didn’t think we’d be able to book his time. I’m happy to say NANPS reached out to Joey anyway.
Great question! There are three key reasons why we decided to invite Joey to be our speaker. First, he is a powerful native plant advocate who is getting people, outside of typical botanical audiences, interested in native plants and ecology. Joey speaks in a down-to-earth, unpretentious way, with a Chicago accent that is both disarming and holds people’s attention.
Secondly, Joey has a huge reach and fan base from his WIRED episode, and his own podcast, TV show, and all of the interviews he has done on other podcasts. We want our members to have the thrill of a webinar with a celebrity botanist.
And finally, we are looking at the content presented by other conservation groups and asking ourselves how we can offer our members something different or unique. Joey Santore satisfies this unique offering; this is exactly the spice we wanted to add to our overall programming.
Yes. We asked him to present his top five favorite native Carolinian plants. His presentation will take up less than half of the webinar. The remainder of the time we are saving for the audience to ask questions.
In general, Joey’s content makes me laugh, sometimes makes me blush, and contains great information about plants and ecology. There may be some colourful language during the presentation, which is part of how Joey makes talking about plants hip and cool to the mainstream. His approach is very different from how most PhDs would talk about plants because Joey has built his public persona on his colourful language, interesting life story and unwavering passion for native plants. In fact, the description on Joey’s YouTube Channel: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn’t says the content is “A Low-Brow, Crass Approach to Plant Ecology & Evolution as muttered by a Misanthropic Chicago Italian. We study plants through the lens of ecology and evolution, rather than what supposed anthropocentric uses they can provide (as if holding up the biosphere wasn’t enough).” That description gives you an idea of what to expect during the webinar.
We hope our members have a lot of fun in this exchange with Joey Santore. This is a different experience than what our members can expect from a typical speaker at NANPS, and the aim is to have fun and engage in a lively conversation.
At this time we are discussing possible webinar topics with a regenerative arborist and we are actively seeking Indigenous speakers on native plant topics.
Absolutely. This has been a pleasure and thanks for the opportunity to connect with our membership.
Register for the February 25th webinar with Joey Santore here.