EcoDoc Podcast

Dr Will Liddell and  Dr Fiona Godlee, Editor in Chief of the British Medical Journal, discuss the threats to public health posed by environmental change and the role of medical journals in alerting doctors to the challenges we face in confronting climate change. We also discuss the role of the BMJ in campaigning for greater transparency in clinical research and issues of gender and race in medicine.
  Sound engineering by Rob Wynne-Griffiths.  

Dr Will Liddell talks Prof Simon Potts of Reading University about his career in agroecology. Many of our food crops are crucially dependent on ecosystems services provided by insects and plants we call weeds. As the pressure to increase the yield and quality of crops over recent years has ramped up, so has the destruction of natural habitat in agricultural landscapes and the use of agrochemicals. However, the success of farming depends on those elements of nature which may have previously been regarded as a nuisance. Our better understanding of the importance of complex interactions is driving a move to ecological intensification, in which natural processes are valued rather than surpressed. 
  Sound engineering by Rob Wynne-Griffiths.  

Dr Will Liddell talks to Ben Asaw of the Field Studies Council about the extraordinary diversity of beetles and their importance in ecosytems as predators, pests, pollinators and waste disposal specialists. Did you know that the great Australia barbie was effectively rescued by African dung beetles? You cannot fail to be seduced by Dan's enthusiasm for these overlooked creatures.
Sound engineering by Rob Wynne-Griffiths.

Dr Will Liddell talks to Dr Grace Thompson, family doctor and environmentalist, about combining medical practice, training doctors and activism.
 Sound engineering by Rob Wynne-Griffiths. 

Dr Will Liddell talks to Dr Andrew Morrice, a family doctor in Somerset, about the principles of Human Givens and how this has shaped his practice of medicine. Conventional medicine tends to focus on disease, its diagnosis and management (often with medication), while Human Givens takes into account the environment in which we find ourselves, and how this may ciontribute to ill health,  as well as our own internal resources for healing.
Sound engineering by Rob Wynne-Griffiths.

Will Liddell talks to Keith Betton, Chairman of the Hampshire Ornithological Society about his life-long interest in birds and how this developed into a successful career in public relations. Keith was recruited in a London park by a peer of the realm and found himself sitting on a parliamentary committee on birds at the age of 13. He talks about his international adventures and conservation issues closer to home, in particular the plight of the stone curlew.
 Sound engineering by Rob Wynne-Griffiths.