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: Whale Watching

Whale watching

Whale Watching

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Whale Watching

Rana Mitter dives into the world of whales and examines our relationship to marine life.

From whale scavengers to Moby-Dick via sea squirts and anemones, Rana Mitter and guests plumb the murky depths of our relationship with creatures of the deep.

The first underwater film, the making of Moby Dick in Fishguard, Wales, the poetry of Marianne Moore and the secret world of whale scavengers are conjured by Rana Mitter's guests:

In a new book, Strandings, Peter Riley, Associate Professor in Poetry and Poetics at the University of Durham, loses himself in the secretive world of whale-scavengers who descend on coastlines to claim trophies from washed-up carcasses.

Author and artist Philip Hoare has written extensively about whales, encountering them often in his daily swims in the sea. His most recent book, Albert and the Whale, explores the life of Albrecht Dürer. You can hear him talking more about this link in another Free Thinking episode called Dürer, Rhinos and Whales https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001212c

Rachel Murray is a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Sheffield whose current project examines the presence of marine life, particularly invertebrates, in contemporary and modern literature and both she and Philip Hoare look at the poetry of Marianne Moore. You can hear her presenting a Radio 4 feature Lady Chatterley's Bed Bugs https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000qwtx

Edward Sugden, Senior Lecturer in American Studies at King’s College, is undertaking a biography of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick, which turns the novel itself into a character and tracks its turbulent history from near-obscurity to becoming one of the most enduring novels of all time.

Producer: Tim Bano

You can find a playlist exploring prose and poetry of all kinds on the Free Thinking website and a series of programmes exploring Modernist ideas and writing and there's also an episode devoted to Jaws: Sharks and Whales https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b060zryf

Image: A sperm whale

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