Free Thinking

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Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with artists and thinkers in debates and interviews.

The ideas shaping our lives today - with leading artists and thinkers in extended interview and debate.

Free Thinking: Nature Writing

Nature Writing

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Nature Writing

From Gilbert White to lockdown blogs - why we need to spend more time in nature.

Lucy Jones, Pippa Marland and New Generation Thinker Dafydd Mills Daniel join Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough.

Gilbert White was born on July 19th 1720 at his grandfather's vicarage in Hampshire.  His Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne (1789) influenced a young Charles Darwin and he's been called England's first ecologist.  Dafydd Mills Daniel from the University of Oxford tracks his influence on contemporary debates about the impact of man on the planet and the beginnings of precise and scientific observations about birds and animals.  Dr Pippa Marland from the University of Leeds runs the Landlines project https://landlinesproject.wordpress.com/ and researches the way farming has been depicted in British literature. She has co-edited a collection of Essays for Routledge called Walking, Landscape and Environment.  And Lucy Jones is the author of Losing Eden: Why Our Minds Need the Wild. She talks about research into health and nature and women writers including Christiane Ritter.  Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough hosts. 

This conversation is part of a series showcasing new academic research which are made available as New Thinking podcasts on the BBC Arts & Ideas stream.  They are put together with assistance from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, part of UK research and innovation.   https://ahrc.ukri.org/favouritenaturebooks/ 

New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the AHRC to work with early career academics and find opportunities in broadcasting to share their research.
Eleanor Rosamund Barraclough and Dafydd Mills Daniel have both come through the scheme.  

The Green Thinking playlist on the Free Thinking programme website https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07zg0r2
includes a re-reading of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0005gwk 
and interviews with Elizabeth Jane Burnett about her poems about soil, an Essay about Charlotte Smith and an interview with Chris Packham

Producer: Robyn Read

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.

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