Do you ever feel a bit stressed and think that taking a walk in the woods is just the thing to calm your mind? Maybe you take a moment to listen to the birdsong around you to lift your mood during your lunch hour. Or maybe you feel a deep sensation of relaxation when you hear the sound of a gently flowing brook.

Over the past decade or so new evidence on what is going on in our bodies when we interact with nature has emerged leading to some fascinating discoveries showing how forming a deeper relationship with nature can help our mental and physical health.

In this episode, we catch up with Kathy Willis, professor of biodiversity at the University of Oxford to talk about her new book Good Nature: The New Science of How Nature Improves Our Health.

She tells us how smelling pine trees can slow our heart rates, how keeping houseplants can make our gut microbiomes healthier and how touching wooden furniture can help us feel calmer.

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In his book, Into The Clear Blue Sky, Rob Jackson asks an important question, can we really restore the Earth’s atmosphere within our lifetime? He talks us through how this could be possible through technology and genuine effort from civilisation.

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New, so-called ‘superfoods’ frequently find their own moment in the spotlight. But what if there was one type of food that really did help with everything?

Well, microbiome scientist, dietician and ex-chef Dr Emily Leeming thinks that the magic ingredient could be fibre. Following the release of her book Genius Gut, we spoke about how eating more fibre can not only improve your day-to-day life, but also lower your risk of death – from bettering your mood to helping you control your appetite, and even slowing your ageing.

Listen on for Emily’s cooking and meal prep tips for upping your intake!

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Animals can do some pretty cool things, but the world is full of bizarre adaptations you’ve probably never heard of or not given much thought to. In this episode, we speak to vet and TV presenter Dr Jess French, whose new book The Animal Body explains some of the everyday magic of animal anatomy to children.

From slug teeth to self-healing abilities, Jess gives us her most surprising facts and busts some common myths – and even does a special impression of a white-handed gibbon.

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These days we’re constantly bombarded with information, be it from television, social media, friends and family or simply from the world around us. But how do we interpret this information, what role do our beliefs play and how can we harness the power of critical thinking in our daily lives.

In this episode, we catch up with Peter Lamont, a professor of history and theory of psychology at the University of Edinburgh to talk about his latest book Radical Thinking: How to see the bigger picture.

He tells us why we should constantly be questioning the foundation of our beliefs, why we should recognise and embrace our limitations and how thinking radically all begins with curiosity.

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Right now, in labs and lecture halls all around the world, there’s a war raging. Not a physical war of fists and gunfire, but a war of ideas, and of research and of fact.

The battle ground is this: Could it be that we animals are not alone in our ability to make decisions, to feel the world around us, to listen and communicate, maybe even be conscious. In short, could it be that plants are intelligent too?

Today’s guest is Zoë Schlanger, a staff writer at The Atlantic covering the environment, and the author of The Light Eaters, a book exploring the fascinating science of plant intelligence and behaviour.

She argues that plants are more than just a green blob in the ecosystem, but an active part of it; one with the agency to decide its own destiny, and, fundamentally, one which we humans should show respect and reverence towards.

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The future can be scary, but what if there was a way for us to understand it a little better? Tom Chivers believes there is. His new book Everything Is Predictable explains how Bayes Theorem, a statistical model, can explain the world around us and, in some cases, help us predict the future.

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It is easy to feel like we know celebrities, and even love them. But these people don’t know who we are, so is it healthy? We spoke to Karen Shackleford, a media psychologist to better understand the one-sided world of parasocial relationships.

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Ray Kurzweil has made many accurate predictions about AI in the past. Having worked in the area of AI research for 61 years, he is one of the longest standing experts in the field. Now, he’s back with a new book titled The Singularity Is Nearer, breaking down his expectations for our future.

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Mention the word 'fungi' and it’s likely many of our minds will turn to the mushrooms we enjoy sliced on the top of our favourite pizza or bowl of pasta. But there’s more to these fascinating organisms than this. Without fungi we’d have no yeast to make bread or brew beer and no penicillin to treat infections.

In this episode, we catch up physician and immunology researcher Arturo Casadevall to talk about his latest book What if Fungi Win?

He tells us about the essential role fungi plays in the ecosystems and lifecycles of the Earth, how they pose a potential threat to our food supplies, the role climate change is playing in the evolution of fungi and the role they may possibly play in combatting it.

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