In Pat Shipman’s book, The Invaders (Harvard University Press), she argues that our last close relative, the Neanderthals, were driven to extinction not solely by climate change – though that… Read More

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The recent news story about robots developing their own private language claimed alarmed Facebook researchers had to pull the plug on their experiment. The story turned out to be not… Read More

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What do we know about the Earth’s ancient climate, and how do we know it? What can it tell us about its – and our – possible future? Leicester professor… Read More

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This week’s programme is an interview with Fiona Stafford, in which we discuss humanity’s long, rich and complex relationship with trees. Fiona, who is a professor of English at Oxford,… Read More

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“Elephants are not treated much differently now than they were in the mid-eighteenth century: they are objects of awe and conservation, yet legally hunted, made captive, abused, and forced to… Read More

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I heard an interesting interview with Robert Ferguson on the New York Times Books podcast at the weekend in which he talked about his new book on Scandinavia (“an engaging,… Read More

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Here is another freshly re-edited recording from my archive. Robert Douglas-Fairhurst’s biography of the first three decades of Dickens’ life, published by Harvard University Press, is a terrifically readable, refreshing… Read More

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‘As soon as humans make images, they make them about humans and they make them about animals and the relationship between them.’ My guest on this programme from the archive… Read More

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“I’m interested in saying, look, how can you challenge the Asterix-and-the-Romans kind of image that we tend to have of Rome? We are determined to turn a blind eye to… Read More

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My guest on this newly re-edited programme from the archive is Roger Luckhurst, who – as he puts it – teaches “horror and the occasional respectable novel by Henry James”… Read More

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