During the pandemic lockdown in 2020, some of us baked bread, other made Dalgona coffee, and Hao Pei started guerilla growing rice varieties on a terrace.

In this episode, Hao Pei reveals the origin story of 飯醉集團 Secret (Rice) Society - a guerilla rice garden to save and share native rice varieties and vernacular growing knowledge located on a rooftop in Toa Payoh. He shares about his brushes with the Town Council due to ‘unauthorised planting’, as well as the erasure of native rice varieties tracing back to the Green Revolution and surgence of GMO seeds and hybrid varieties.

Hao Pei believes that rice is more than just food to be consumed, it contains layers of knowledge. What are the stories do we tell about rice? What variety of rice do we consume in Singapore and why? Listen on and find out with us.

Resources

• Broken Rice Atlas - https://brokenriceatlas.net/

• Secret Rice Society - https://www.instagram.com/secretricesociety/

In this episode, Aditi unpacks the language that come to shape our perception of soil and shares how Living Soil Asia aims to build and renew our connection to soil through its education programmes. Likening soil to a sourdough starter, Aditi reveals how the life that exist within our soil, or soil microbiology, forms the basis of a healthy food system. Han Jing also discusses the often-overlooked aspects of soil when it comes to growing food and the need for soil regeneration in urban Singapore.

Climate change is connected to broader social determinants of health, and Aditi and Han Jing speaks to the interconnected of soil to everything around us. How does the health of our soil mirror the health of our communities? What do we lose when we lose touch with the soil, and how do we regenerate our soil in our ‘concrete jungle’?

Listen on and reimagine our soil story with us.

Resources

• Living Soil Asia - https://livingsoil.asia/

• Project Black Gold: Community food scrap collective - https://www.projectblackgold.sg/

• Foodscape Collective: Co-creating an inclusive circular food system - https://foodscapecollective.com/

In the final episode of the season, the Climate Cheesecake team was invited to the Waves of Change Festival 2022 at ArtScience Museum. They share personal experiences with climate anxiety, and some of the ways they cope with it.

Recorded live on 9 October 2022, with postscripts.

Why do we love pandas and hate bugs? Doesn’t all wildlife deserve the same love and respect? We discuss this double standard in our responses to these creatures in this 25 minute episode!

Our very first guest @sgbeetlenut hangs out with @theweirdandwild and @sankarology to talk about beetles and shit. No legit, we talk about actual shit.

Why is it that animals used to be so commonplace but now we need to take day trips to Ubin to see them? Turns out this is a bigger phenomenon at play!

Karsts, rainforests - our constant demand for resources and unsustainable trade are pushing these ecosystems to the brink - and there's a real cost to biodiversity!

Join @sankarology and @ohletsfly as they talk about this crisis and what we can do about it.

What does COP27 have to do with us?

What do forest fires have to do with peat?

What does climate change have to do with palm oil?

What does climate change have to do with our food?

Climate change is depressing and it’s honestly a lot to take in. What do global climate declarations and supply chain disruptions actually mean to the average person on the ground? Here at Climate Cheesecake, we try to break down these global, regional and local happenings into more manageable slices - so it’s not so overwhelming (not so jelat lah).