Free Thinking Folgen

Paul Kingsnorth, former deputy-editor of The Ecologist, co-founder of the Dark Mountain Project and author of novels including The Wake and Beast, talks about his changing attitude to the environmental movement. Environmental lawyer James Thornton and writer Martin Goodman recount their travels from Poland to Ghana, Alaska to China, to see how citizens are using public interest law to protect their planet. Plus, critic Maria Delgado and biographer Adam Feinstein consider the lost poems of that Chilean lover of nature, Pablo Neruda. Client Earth by James Thornton and Martin Goodman is published on the 11th of May. Confessions of a Recovering Environmentalist by Paul Kingsnorth is out now. The World-Ending Fire: The Essential Wendell Berry selected and introduced by Paul Kingsnorth is out now. Then Come Back: The Lost Neruda Poems, by Pablo Neruda is published on Thursday 27 April 2017. Neruda a film by Pablo Larraín starring Gael García Bernal as a policeman searching for the Chilean politician Pablo Neruda played by Luis Gnecco is out in cinemas across the UK now. Producer: Craig Templeton Smith.

Michèle Roberts' latest novel evokes Victorian London. Matthew Sweet asks how it smelt and what do museums do to create past smells. Plus a cultural history of dentistry with the medical historian Richard Barnett. The Walworth Beauty by Michèle Roberts is out now. The Smile Stealers: The Fine and Foul Art of Dentistry by Richard Barnett is out now. Producer: Fiona McLean.

The American poet Mark Doty, Professor Sarah Churchwell and the young British poet Andrew McMillan join Matthew Sweet for a programme dedicated to one of the classics of American poetry, Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. Readings performed by William Hope. Producer: Fiona McLean. Originally broadcast on Thu 8 Oct 2015.