A widowed, divorced, bankrupt poultry farmer who suffered a mental breakdown at 39 seems an unlikely candidate to rival Charles Darwin. Yet Ynes Mexia, a Mexican-American botanist with zero scientific background, began her field career in her 50s and became one of the most prolific plant collectors of the 20th century. This episode explores how decades of chaos became the perfect training ground.

We track her transformation from a life of false starts into a fearless explorer who navigated the Amazon by canoe, bypassed academic gatekeepers, and disregarded the gender norms of her era.

• A transient bilingual upbringing that unwittingly built the survival toolkit for extreme fieldwork
• Her debut trip to Mexico: 500 specimens brought back despite fractured ribs, matching Darwin’s Beagle haul
• A freelance business model selling specimen shares to fund independent expeditions
• A two-and-a-half-year South American journey yielding 65,000 specimens and months with the Aguaruna people
• A 13-year career producing over 145,000 specimens and 500 new species before her death at 68