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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: Beyond 'Silent Spring'

The Essay: Beyond 'Silent Spring': Episode 2: The Population Bomb

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Factual: Science & Nature: Nature & Environment

Beyond 'Silent Spring'

Episode 2

Episode 2: The Population Bomb

The Population Bomb

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Charles Godfray on The Population Bomb, a text warning of starvation from overpopulation.

Biologist Charles Godfray discusses The Population Bomb, published in 1968, a text that warned of mass starvation to come in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation.

'Silent Spring', written by Rachel Carson and published in 1962, is widely credited with having launched the environmental movement. Serialised in The New Yorker, it caused a furore. The first chapter presents a fictionalised portrait of the devastating effects that chemicals could have on a thriving farming community "Some evil spell had settled on the community; mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death."? 
But what has been happening to environmental thinking since Silent Spring? 

Here, five key figures in the world of environmentalism deliver essays on Silent Spring and some of the important works that followed it.

In episode two, population biologist Charles Godfray of Oxford University, tackles 'The Population Bomb', published in 1968, a text that warned of mass starvation to come in the 1970s and 1980s due to overpopulation.

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.

Key figures in the world of environmentalism consider important writing on the subject

Five key figures in the world of environmentalism consider other important writing on the subject since the publication of Rachel Carson's celebrated book Silent Spring in 1962

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Beyond 'Silent Spring'

Episode 2: The Population Bomb

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