Private Passions

Original version

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

BBC Radio 3

Radio 3

Private Passions Podcast

Discussion & Talk

Music: Classical

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates

Guests from all walks of life discuss their musical loves and hates, and talk about the influence music has had on their lives

Private Passions: Adam Rutherford

Adam Rutherford

BBC Radio 3 - Private Passions, Adam Rutherford

Michael Berkeley’s guest is geneticist and broadcaster Adam Rutherford.

Geneticist and broadcaster Adam Rutherford tells Michael Berkeley how his passion for music allows him to escape the rigours of science and enjoy the emotional side of life.

The geneticist and broadcaster Adam Rutherford tells Michael Berkeley how his passion for music allows him to escape the rigours of science and enjoy the emotional side of life.  

Adam Rutherford’s career in science has taken him from a PhD on the role of genetics in eye development to becoming a well-known broadcaster who campaigns against pseudoscience and racism.

Presenter of Radio 4’s Start the Week and The Curious Cases of Rutherford and Fry, he’s also the author of six bestselling books; a lecturer at University College London; and the recipient of the Royal Society David Attenborough Award for outstanding public engagement with science.

Adam shares some astonishing facts about our genes and our common ancestry: everyone of European descent is definitely directly descended from the eighth-century Emperor Charlemagne – and from the person who cleaned his boots. 

Adam was a music scholar at school and his passion for the violin started with lessons at the age of four and culminated in playing with his teacher in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. We also hear his favourite piece of violin music, Beethoven’s Violin Concerto. Adam is the President of Humanists UK but asks for music from his two musical gods, Bach and Radiohead. 

Producer: Jane Greenwood
A Loftus Media 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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