Past Programs
Animals - 2007
Rats of the air or heroes of war? The surprising history of pigeons Read Transcript
12/12/2007
Often referred to as rats of the air, pigeons are seen as dirty, smelly, disease spreading vermin. But their gentle cooing has won pigeons their fans, including Andrew Blechman, who's written a book about them called Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird.
Nature's monsters and our imagination with David Quammen Read Transcript
21/11/2007
A book about nature's monsters: the Romanian dictator Ceausescu used to hunt bears in the wild, but really he was killing bears that had been fattened and set up for him. We could ask, who was the real monster? and this is the sort of question David Quammen asks in his book Monster of God: the Man Eating Predator in the Jungles of History and the Mind.
David Quammen is a much honoured non-fiction writer. He was Rhodes scholar and has stacks of awards including a Guggenheim fellowship, and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He wrote The Song of the Dodo that included sections on the biology and geography of Tasmania.
David Quammen talks to Kirsten Garrett from his home in the wintery mountains of Montana about how this more recent book Monster of God came into being.
How we got here: The Guinea Pig's History of Biology
05/11/2007
Here is a tale which has an extraordinary range of characters -- rats, peacocks, zebra fish, passionflowers, bacteriophages and many others -- and the plot has lots of sexual and social intrigue. It's the story of how humans got here, as well as the creatures around us. It's called The Guinea Pig's History of Biology, and Kirsten Garrett interviews the author, science historian Dr Jim Endersby.
