My guest today is Dr. Joti Rouillard, a research fellow at the University of Science and Technology in Hefei, China. Dr. Rouillard talks about his research on the earliest fossils on Earth, microscopic bacteria 3.5 billion years old. It turns out, identifying a fossil bacteria is extremely difficult since they resemble other tiny non-living objects. We also talk about working in the Australian Outback, kangaroo encounters, and what happens when you mix alcohol and rocks.

Dr. Rouillard's email: joti.rouillard@gmail.com

My guest today is Dr. Nadja Drabon, a new professor at Harvard University. Dr. Drabon talks about her new discoveries of zircon crystals from South Africa that are more than 4 billion years old, some of the oldest fragments of Earth. Together, we learn just how much we don't know about Earth's earliest days, and what her discoveries can teach us about our planet's ancient secrets. We also talk about her field location in South Africa: the Barberton Greenstone Belt, a new UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Dr. Drabon's website: https://drabon.eps.harvard.edu