Showing results by narrator "Mark Peachey" in All Categories

When philosopher and traveller Will Buckingham’s partner died, he sought solace in throwing open the door to new people. Now, as we reflect on our experiences of the pandemic and its enforced separations, and as global migration figures ever more prominently in our collective future, Buckingham brings together insights from philosophy, anthropology, history and literature to explore how our traditions of meeting the other can mitigate the issues of our time.  

From the 18th century vicar who was the first to look up at the night's sky and suggest there was something very dark and extraordinarily heavy that was moving the stars, to the first actual photograph of a black hole, 250 years later, Jonas Enander has travelled the world, visited telescopes and observatories, interviewed world-leading space researchers, and delved deep into the archives to investigate how our relationship with black holes has changed over time.

Biomimetics literally means emulating biology—and in a broader sense the term covers technological advances where the original inspiration came from nature. The Earth is a vast laboratory where the mechanisms of natural selection have enabled evolutionary solutions to be developed to a wide range of problems. Science writer Brian Clegg looks at how humans have piggybacked on natural experimentation, redeploying a solution to create things that make our lives easier.

Simon Selwood is an academic expert on the monogamous sexual behaviour of birds but hopeless at finding human love. Then he meets Kim, and at last something is more important to him than ornithology. Kim doesn’t give a hoot about birds. And at first she isn’t very interested in Simon, either. Relying on what he has gleaned from observing the opportunistic pied flycatcher and other species, plus the unorthodox advice of old friend Phil, Simon sets out on a mission to discover love for himself. But will he make the right choice?

Sky is convinced a woman she met in tears on the beach is in desperate danger. After all, the abuse is all spelled out in the diary she dropped when she fled. But when Sky tries to rescue Esme Winters from her violent and controlling husband, she stubbornly rejects Sky’s offer of help. Because it’s not her husband she’s frightened of. Esme has a bigger secret to hide and will stop at nothing to protect her lies - even if that means sacrificing Sky’s life to save her own.

When Dennis finds a vulnerable woman by the roadside, recently beaten and robbed, he brings her back to his new home: the basement of a house in which he is the caretaker. But Dennis is a peculiar man. With an ineffectual father and a domineering mother, what he craves is a girlfriend to love. Rosie awakens to find herself held captive by this strange and disturbing man, who returns to his family home every evening to spend time with Mother. What twisted power does Mother hold over her son? Will Mother ensure that Rosie's fate is sealed? Or is Dennis the real threat?

Written by experts and offering listeners the opportunity to pass off appropriated knowledge as their own, the Bluffer's Guides provide hard fact masquerading as frivolous observation in one witty, easy listen. Instantly acquire all the knowledge you need to pass as an expert in the world of quantum physics. Never again confuse a boson with a hadron, a fermion with a meson, or a photon with a lepton or an electron. If in doubt, always fall back on a bluffon.