Late Junction

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Late Junction: Fungi Power with Merlin and Cosmo Sheldrake

Fungi Power with Merlin and Cosmo Sheldrake

BBC Radio 3 - Late Junction, Fungi Power with Merlin and Cosmo Sheldrake

Verity Sharp explores how fungi can fight carbon emissions with the brothers Sheldrake.

During COP26, Verity Sharp considers how fungi can impact climate health with her guests, mycologist and writer Merlin Sheldrake and musician and composer Cosmo Sheldrake.

In the week of the COP26 Climate Conference, Verity Sharp explores both the sonic properties and the carbon emission fighting power of fungi with her guests: the mycologist Merlin Sheldrake and musician Cosmo Sheldrake. 

As well as a special performance of an interspecies collaboration between Cosmo and some mushrooms, they both join Verity to discuss the relationships between fungi and climate health, with particular focus on the differing sound properties, polyphony and network structures found within the fungus kingdom. 

Merlin Sheldrake is a biologist and writer, and the author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds and Shape Our Futures. His main interest is in mycology and fungi, including research explorations into mycelial networks, resonance and polyphony, as well as relationships between humans and non-human organisms.  

Cosmo Sheldrake is a multi-instrumentalist and composer with a passion for the natural world. His latest album Wake Up Calls uses field recordings of birdsong, mostly from endangered British birds, in order to draw people’s attention to the polyphonic soundworlds that surround us, as a reminder not to take any of these creatures and the music that they make for granted.

Elsewhere in the programme, Verity continues to play that fungi music - with tracks inspired by, related to and created from mushrooms. They will be dispersed amongst artistic representations of climate crises from fire to species loss, deforestation, melting icebergs and a track that highlights the temporal overhang of it all, from the Dutch pianist Louis Andriessen.
 
Produced by Rachel Byrne
A Reduced Listening Production for BBC Radio 3

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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Late Junction

Fungi Power with Merlin and Cosmo Sheldrake

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