Second Nature

Oxygen Conservation

Life on Earth is changing faster than ever. Second Nature introduces you to the people driving that change.

Join host Rich Stockdale as he sits down with some of the most interesting people working at the intersection of nature, business, finance, adventure, leadership, and politics. Together, they uncover the stories, lessons, and truths that will shape the future of our planet.

Expect everything from extreme journeys in the wild to high-performance insights, from conservation breakthroughs to the realities of building purpose-driven organisations. These conversations challenge assumptions, spark new thinking, and shine a light on what it really takes to make an impact in the world at scale.

Started in 2023 and brought to you with support from Knight Frank, Second Nature is your chance to learn from the people pushing boundaries and creating change—one honest conversation at a time.

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S1 · E202
Thursday · 1 hr 35 min
E202 Leo Rayman: What If You’re Using Your Best Skills on the Wrong Things?
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.
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S1 · E201
October 29 · 44 min
E201 Tom George: Why It's Time to Let AI Take Over Your Business!
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.
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S1 · E200
October 22 · 42 min
E200 Rich Stockdale: How We Built a Conservation Empire From an Impossible Idea
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.
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S1 · E199
October 16 · 37 min
E199 George Pawley: Scaling Capital - How We're Making Nature Investable
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.
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S1 · E198
October 14 · 34 min
E198 Chris Winter: Scaling Intelligence - The Technology Behind the Future of Nature
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.
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S1 · E197
October 12 · 34 min
E197 Fiona Milden: Scaling Conservation - The People Making It Possible
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.
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S1 · E196
October 8 · 1 hr 42 min
E196 Manuel Pinuela: The Most Undervalued Asset Might Be Right Under Our Feet
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.
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S1 · E195
October 1 · 1 hr 32 min
E195 Eliza Ecclestone & Gavin Lane: Why Britain Needs to Rethink What Its Countryside Is For
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.
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S1 · E194
September 24 · 1 hr 11 min
E194 New York Climate Week Live: The Uncomfortable Truth About AI, Climate Change & Nature
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.
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S1 · E193
September 17 · 1 hr 28 min
E193 Tim Wigmore: What Cricket Can Teach Us About Data, Business, Talent & Risk
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.
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S1 · E192
September 10 · 2 hr 4 min
E192 Sam Larner: Why Talent Alone Doesn't Build a Winning Team
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?
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S1 · E191
September 3 · 1 hr 37 min
E191 Nadia Nikolova: The Uncomfortable Truth About Investing in Nature
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?
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S1 · E190
August 27 · 1 hr 24 min
E190 Cain Blythe: Stop Trying To Save Nature! This Is How We Actually Fund It
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.
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S1 · E189
August 20 · 1 hr 31 min
E189 Nathan Curtis & Ben Stansfield: What Makes A Great Lawyer?
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?
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S1 · E188
August 13 · 1 hr 47 min
E188 Tom Crowther: Stop Trying To Save The World
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.
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S1 · E187
August 6 · 1 hr 8 min
E187 Katie Neck & Elena Doms: Building A Movement
Nature doesn't have a science problem. It has a communication problem. From Formula 1 paddocks to boardrooms, from global brands to Climate Week, Katie Neck and Elena Doms explore why the future of conservation depends less on convincing people they're wrong and more on showing them what's possible. Commercial thinking, personal brands, storytelling and optimism aren't distractions from protecting nature—they might be the reason more people join the mission. Along the way, they discuss why Formula 1 became an unlikely lesson in sustainability, how founders can build influence beyond their company, where AI genuinely creates value, and why reconnecting people with nature starts with understanding what they already care about.
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S1 · E186
July 30 · 1 hr 43 min
E186 Ollie Potter & Kevin Webb: The Nature Tech Revolution
Everyone agrees nature matters. Almost nobody understands where the real opportunity is. Nature tech is quietly becoming one of the most important investment themes of the next decade. AI is changing conservation faster than most people realise. Data centres are forcing a rethink of environmental infrastructure. And the companies that solve biodiversity, agriculture and ecosystem restoration won't just protect the planet—they'll build entirely new markets. Rich sits down with Ollie Potter, founder of Nature Tech Memos, and Kevin Webb, founder of Superorganism, to explore why London Climate Week felt like a tipping point for the sector, why AI may become nature's greatest ally, and why the biggest technology companies in the world could soon become the largest investors in real natural assets. If they're right, we're watching the foundations of a trillion-dollar economy being built in real time.
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S1 · E185
July 23 · 1 hr 32 min
E185 Benedict Macon-Cooney: Winning The AI Century
Everyone agrees AI will change the world. Almost nobody is asking what happens when governments built for the industrial age try to govern the intelligence age. Benedict Macon-Cooney has spent over a decade inside the Tony Blair Institute, advising political leaders around the world on AI, state capacity and government reform. This isn't a conversation about chatbots. It's about whether Western governments can still deliver, why public services are getting more expensive while outcomes deteriorate, and why AI might become the biggest reform opportunity since the post-war settlement. From DeepMind and SpaceX to healthcare, defence, natural capital and economic competitiveness, this conversation explores what happens when technology moves faster than politics—and why countries that fail to adapt won't simply fall behind. They'll become irrelevant.
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S1 · E184
July 21 · 1 hr 53 min
E184 Soma Pitiryi: The Human Algorithm
Everyone talks about product-market fit. Hardly anyone talks about founder-market fit. Soma Pirityi believes we've been measuring startups the wrong way. After building businesses, losing money, working in venture capital and studying AI, risk and entrepreneurship across Cambridge, UCL and St Andrews, he reached a simple conclusion: companies rarely fail because of the spreadsheet. They fail because of the people behind it. This conversation explores why founders romanticise failure, why AI won't replace great co-founders, how investors really make decisions, why cognitive diversity matters more than intelligence, and why understanding psychology could become the biggest competitive advantage in business.
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S1 · E183
July 16 · 1 hr 39 min
E183 James Cameron: The Lawyer Who Changed Climate
James Cameron has spent four decades operating where politics, business and the environment collide. He helped shape modern international climate law, advised governments across the world, founded one of the first climate investment businesses to manage over $1.7 billion, and still believes the biggest opportunities are ahead of us. But this conversation isn't really about climate. It's about reinvention. About being expelled from school twice before becoming one of the world's leading legal minds. About why great ideas rarely progress in a straight line. Why optimism is a competitive advantage. And why the people who build the future are usually the ones naïve enough to believe impossible things can be done.
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