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This episode is a conversation with Dr Kirk Johnson, the Sant Director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History. This is the largest natural history museum in the world, by visitor numbers of over 5 million a year. Kirk has a long history in museums, having been the VICE PRESIDENT of the Denver Museum of Nature and Science BEFORE MOVING TO Washington DC in 2012, but his passion and his scientific background are in plant palaeontology. With his first published paper appearing at the tender age of just 23, Kirk is a passionate scientist and science communicator, with major television series to his name. I first met Kirk working together in 2014 on Making of North America for NOVA in the US and, in 2018 and 2019, we subsequently worked on a climate change special called Polar Extremes for the same channel. I am honoured to count Kirk among my friends as well as my colleagues and I can honestly say that spending time in the field with him has changed the way I see the natural world. He is always generous with his time and considered in his thinking, so I’m sure you’ll enjoy his company and conversation. Kirk’s sister Kirsten Johnson is a Oscar-nominated film-maker who has made an incredible film for Netflix about their father’s dementia and which seems to be heading for more awards. And it is with the film, Dick Johnson is Dead, that we start the conversation as we spoke a day or so after its release. The conversation was recorded in October 2020, the week that Trump contracted Covid, so all the references are in the context of that time rather than all the craziness which has happened since.