WEBVTT

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Welcome to Spotlight Advanced. I'm Bruce
Gulland and I'm Megan Noolette. Spotlight uses

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a special English method of broadcasting.
It is easier for people to understand no

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matter where in the world they live. A small woman stands on the edge

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of a beach. It is on
a coast in the United Kingdom. The

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air smells of salt and mud,
and the beach is full of rocks and

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small pools of water. The woman
wades through these pools. She is looking

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for a small red plant called lava. It is a kind of seaweed.

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Seaweed, like lava, grows in
many countries. One species is very important

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in Japan. There people make food
out of it. They call it nori.

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But the seaweed is mysterious. No
one knows how it grows. This

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woman's name is Kathleen Drew Baker.
She has made it her goal to understand

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this kind of seaweed. She is
not being paid for studying seaweed. She

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is doing it because she is interested. Most people would not care about her

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work, but by studying seaweed,
Kathleen Drew Baker will save a whole industry.

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Today's Spotlight is on Kathleen Drew Baker. Kathleen Drew Baker was a scientist

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and researcher from the United Kingdom.
She was born in nineteen oh one.

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She became a scientist when she was
very young, and she was one of

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the first women to teach at her
university. But Drew Baker's life in science

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was not easy. Although she was
smart, it was hard for her to

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lead in a science field. Susan
hand Chetterly is a science writer. She

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wrote about Drew Baker in her book
The Seaweed Chronicles. She lived in a

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time when women in science were not
taken seriously if they chose to marry.

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When she married, she was let
go from her job. In time,

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she returned to the university as a
research assistant, but in the years between

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she worked out of her own laboratory. Her husband, also a scientist,

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built her the laboratory at their home. Drew Baker's university believed that she would

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only be a mother and a wife, but she continued her studies even after

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having two children. Drew Baker achieved
many things in her life, but most

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people know her for her work with
nori. Nori is a very important crop

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in Japan. The Japanese people have
used it in food for over a thousand

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years. They use it to flavor
dishes. They create a paper from it

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to make sushi and rice balls.
But for a long time, no one

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knew where nori came from. Nori
did not have seeds like some plants.

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Instead, farmers created nets that they
would put in the water. The nori

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would grow on the nets. In
some years, the harvest was good.

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In others, the harvest was bad. There was no way to control how

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much nori farmers would get. Then, in the nineteen forties there was a

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very bad harvest. Any More bad
harvests followed several typhoons, A kind of

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strong storm hit Japan. It killed
a lot of the nori. Pollution killed

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even more. Soon there was almost
no norri at all. It had disappeared.

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Kathleen drew Baker did not know this
when she started studying seaweed. She

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had never been to Japan. She
did not even know the word nori.

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She called the seaweed lever. Drew
Baker was very interested in lava. She

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noticed that it only seemed to grow
during winter. It sent out spores in

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order to grow more, but nothing
would grow for a whole year. Where

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did the spores go? And why
could no one grow lava? After drew

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baker experiment died with the seaweed.
She gathered the plants from the shore.

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Then she planted them in a big
tank. She tried to discover what made

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them grow, but she could never
do it. She worked with labor for

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almost nine years. One day,
Drew Baker had an idea. She threw

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some shells into the tank. The
seaweed behaved as it normally did, but

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soon she saw something grow on the
shells. It was a red slime.

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Drew Baker was disappointed. She believed
that this was a different kind of plant

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growing. She feared that her experiment
was ruined. But she soon learned that

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she was wrong. The red slime
was labor. It was just a different

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part of its life stage. During
the summer, the labor grew as the

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red slime on shells. It needed
them to grow. They also protected the

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plant from heat and rough seas.
During the winter, labor would leave the

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shells. It would grow high up
so that it could reach the sun.

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Drew Baker had finally discovered labor's secrets. This discovery was very important to Drew

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Baker, but it was even more
important than she knew at first. Shokichi

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Segawa was a Japanese biologist. He
studied underwater plant life, and he was

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worried about nori disappearing. Then he
heard about Drew Baker's discovery. He knew

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that nori was very similar to lava, maybe it would grow in the same

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way too. He filled a tank
with nori and shells. Soon the same

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red slime began to grow. Then
the seaweed followed. Segua finally understood what

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had happened to the norri. The
strong storms had disturbed shells that the norri

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grew on. Pollution made it hard
for them to grow back. Was not

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just the norri that had disappeared,
it was the shellfish too. Soon others

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began to grow norriy in tanks,
and they took better care of shellfish in

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growing areas. It took a long
time, but the norri crop began to

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recover. Farmers could control how much
they grew, so more and more people

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could eat norri. To day,
the norri industry is very large. People

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eat it all over the world,
and the people who grow it still use

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Kathleen Drew Baker's methods, but Drew
Baker did not live to see her work

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success. She made her discovery in
nineteen forty nine and she died in nineteen

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fifty seven. Her life was not
an easy one. People did not accept

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her. They dismissed her because she
was a married woman. But she continued

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doing what she loved and because of
it, Kathleen Drew Baker saved an industry

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today. Nori Farmer's honor Drew Baker's
memory. In nineteen sixty three, they

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made a statue for her in Uto
City, Japan, and every April fourteenth

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there is a celebration in her name. It is called the Mother of the

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Sea Festival. Doctor John Rendall is
one of Drew Baker's children. He visited

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Japan and he spoke at the festival
honoring his mother. My mother never knew

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what an important change her work would
bring about. She studied seaweed just to

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know more about it. But without
her work, the whole industry would be

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gone. I do not know what
my mother would think about it now.

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She would be surprised what she did
back then turned into a multi billion dollar

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industry. But I do not think
she would like sushi she was not very

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adventurous when it came to food.
Kathleen Drew Baker saw creation as an ordered

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place for careful study. Confidence in
her work allowed her to discover the secret

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of Laver's growth. Her discovery allowed
Japan to recover seaweed farming and benefit the

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world of sushi. Have you ever
eaten sushi? Do you enjoy the flavor

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of sushi? We want to hear
your thoughts. You can leave a comment

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on our website at www dot Spotlight
English dot com. You can also find

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us on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. The writer of this

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program was Dan Chrisman. The producer
was Megio Ozaki. The voices you heard

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were from the United Kingdom and the
United States. All quotes were adapted for

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this program and voiced by Spotlight.
This program is called The Woman Who Saved

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Sushi. Visit our website to download
our free official app for Android and Apple

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devices. We hope you can join
us again for the next Spotlight program. Goodbye,