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
Jerry Kaplan: Humans Need Not Apply
Category: podcast
Jan Zalasiewicz on 4 billion years of climate history
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
Fiona Stafford on the long, long life of trees
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
Gay Bradshaw: elephants on the edge
“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
Robert Douglas-Fairhurst on the young Dickens
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
Martin Kemp on the human animal in art and science
‘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
Zoë Anderson on The Ballet Lover’s Companion
In the spring of 2015 I interviewed Zoë Anderson, who writes on ballet for the Independent and Dancing Times, to talk about her Ballet Lover’s Companion, published by Yale University… Read More
Mary Beard on the Roman triumph
“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
Roger Luckhurst on the mummy’s curse
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
Jeremy Mynott on birdscapes
Birding World called it “an absolutely fascinating book, exhaustively researched, beautifully written, both learned and humorous, and endlessly stimulating. . . . A book which informs and delights at first… Read More