Agile Rabbit

About Agile Rabbit

Agile Rabbit (www.agile-rabbit.com) is a platform that provides special events for the South-West and beyond to focus on ideas, global affairs and the natural and scientific world. The events are set in contrasting venues across the South-West to provide quirky experiences, which welcome conversation. There is a monthly talk and discussion at Exeter Phoenix, and other special events elsewhere including IntoBodmin and Marine Theatre Lyme Regis. The events include panel discussions, debates, film screenings, and performances. This diversity of experiences sets the tone of Agile Rabbit as inclusive, emphasising our key theme: That cutting edge thinking can be at the centre of everyday life. Origin Lapin Agile is a cabaret in Montmartre, Paris. At the turn of the twentieth century artists, thinkers, and scientists would gather to discuss ideas and socialise.

Publisher

Agile Rabbit

Category

society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

20 Mar 2019

Latest episode

3 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

1 of 57 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   3 Oct 2026

   Professor Tim Coulson | A Little History of Everything

   Oxford Professor Tim Coulson talks about his recent book, ‘A Little History of Everything’. He takes us on a 13.8-billion-year journey, exploring what science has revealed about what had to happen for us to exist. Tim Coulson is a biologist working at the interface of ecology and evolution. He develops theory to explore how ecological change influences evolution, and vice versa. He tests this theory using dynamic models parameterised with data from both experimental and observational systems. The resulting insights are used to explain how, why, and when nature responds to anthropogenic impacts. Field sites include Yellowstone, Queensland’s Heron Island, and the streams of Northern Trinidad. He has served as Head of both the Department of Zoology and the Department of Biology at the University of Oxford where he is Professor of Zoology. He also enjoys popularizing science, publishing his first book “A Little History of Everything” with Penguin in 2025. He has been awarded the Scientific Medal of the Zoological Society of London, the Per Brinck Oikos Award from the Nordic Society Oikos, and the Marsh Award from the British Ecological Society

2. 

   29 May 2026

   Dame Ottoline Leyser | How Plants Decide What To Do : Thinking Like A Vegetable

   A plant’s existence may seem rather uneventful, spending its days rooted to the spot, seemingly at the mercy of the things around it. Can plants think? Well, plants are intelligent creatures able to adapt in ways we animals can only imagine. Rather than having a brain – a central decision making centre – they can alter their entire body in response to their surroundings. Dame Ottoline Leyser has spent her career passionately unearthing the mysterious mechanisms that underpin this process. She’s pieced together the finely-tuned network of signals which plants use for distributed decisions making processes. These new insights into what plants get up to are so remarkable that Ottoline is determined to change the way we think about them. DAME OTTOLINE LEYSER Regius Professor of Botany Clare College Cambridge University Dame Henrietta Miriam Ottoline Leyser DBE FRS is a British plant biologist and Regius Professor of Botany at the University of Cambridge. From 2013 to 2020 she was the director of the Sainsbury Laboratory, Cambridge. From 2020 to 2025 she was CEO of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI).

3. 

   31 Oct 2025

   A History of Hip Hop

   In a special conversation event, we chart hip hop’s first five decades, from its birth in the block parties of the Bronx and origins in Jamaica, to commercial gangsta-rap and right up to today’s artists. We discuss how this American revolution in music, dance, and art spread across the global cultural landscape. Hear four speakers passionately bring to life the culture and music – but also political theory, American history, and sociology. With our own sub-genres here in the UK, we’ll look at the key moments that led to this country’s enthusiastic embrace and interpretation of hip-hop, particularly by Afro-Caribbean communities. Part of Futures – a free festival of discovery that celebrates innovative and world-class research taking place at universities across the South West. It’s funded by the UKRI. SPEAKERS MYKAELL RILEY Senior Lecturer College of Design, Creative & Digital Industries University of Westminster. Mykaell is Director of The Black Music Research Unit (BMRU), and senior researcher and curator at the University of Westminster. Central to Mykaell’s research is his work on mapping Black British music. Bass Culture is a response to the disengagement and lack of education surrounding the heritage of Jamaican and Jamaican-influenced music in Britain over the last six decades. Mykaell’s career started as a founder member of the British roots Reggae band Steel Pulse who would go onto receive a Grammy. Over the years he has performed, produced, managed and consulted on many successful artists and their projects. As a professional writer/producer, Mykaell’s work has encompassed TV, Film and Theatre, resulting in over eleven UK top twenty positions, and three UK number ones. LIZZIE BOWES Research Associate Black Music Research Unit Universities of Westminster and Bristol Lizzie Bowes is Research Associate at the Black Music Research Unit. She supports Dr. Mykaell Riley, Director of the BMRU, as the Unit continues to operate as the foremost research centre for the study of Black-British music and culture. Outside of her work for the BMRU, Lizzie is an AHRC funded PhD student at the University of Bristol, working on an interdisciplinary project on Black-British rap and autofiction. ROB TURNER Senior Lecturer in 20th and 21st-Century Literature English University of Exeter Rob Turner’s research is focused on American literature, with a particular interest in experiments in sound. He writes regularly about experimental music for the Wire magazine. Current projects include a book on sonic ecology and poetry, and an edited collection on hip-hop, literature, and American culture. Recent publications include two book chapters on the politics of epic (considering works by Ezra Pound and Will Alexander), and an analysis of Samuel Delany’s Afrofuturist metafictions. SIMON TOPPING Associate Professor School of Law, Humanities and Social Sciences University of Plymouth Simon Topping is Associate Professor of United States History at Plymouth University. He is the author of Lincoln’s Lost Legacy: The Republican Party and the African American Vote, 1928-1952 (University Press of Florida, 2008) which was short-listed for the 2009 Neustadt prize. He has published a number of articles on the importation of American racism into Northern Ireland during the Second World War.

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 29 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

46

Social presence

0

YouTube

0

Engagement

30

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Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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