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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Wild Things II

The Essay: Wild Things II: Episode 5: The Snake

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Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

The Snake

Episode 5

Episode 5: The Snake

Wild Things II

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Wild Things II, The SnakeClose menu

Ruth Padel on our feelings towards the snake through biology, history and literature.

Poet and writer Ruth Padel explores the conflicting feelings humans have towards snakes through biology, history and literature.

The image of the snake is full of symbolism with its connotations of venom and forked tongues. It has inspired poets as diverse as Keats and D.H. Lawrence with its ability to move without limbs. In her final Essay on British wild animals, the poet and writer Ruth Padel explores how our responses to the snake have been shaped by biology, literature and history. She remembers her own experience of watching an adder in Cornwall and asks how snakes fit into our physical and emotional landscape.

Producer: Emma Kingsley.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Series in which poet and writer Ruth Padel explores our reactions to native wild animals

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Episode 5: The Snake

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