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.

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

Free Thinking: Beasts and animals

Beasts and animals

BBC Radio 4 - Free Thinking, Beasts and animals

Shahidha Bari investigates the human invention of animals.

Shahidha Bari investigates the human invention of animals, from Medieval bestiaries to modern zoology.

Are animals a human invention? What is a llama like? Do plants have sex? Was Amelia Earhart eaten by crabs? These are just some of the questions posed by Shahidha Bari and addressed by her guests Katherine Rundell, Dan Taylor, Helen Cowie and Stella Sandford, as they trace the history of human conceptualisations of animals and the natural world. From the Medieval tendency to draw moral lessons from animals, to Linnaeus' attempts to organise them into taxonomies, via Darwin's abolition of the distinction between humans and animals, to the sense of wonder at the natural world needed to orient us towards tackling ecological crises. Plus, the growing area of plant philosophy and how it overturns the history of western metaphysics. 

Katherine Rundell's The Golden Mole and Other Living Treasure and Stella Sandford's Vegetal Sex: Philosophy of Plants are both out now. 

Producer: Luke Mulhall

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