Lives lived differently: obscure pursuits and ambitious designs.
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At the time of this episode’s release, Pen Hadow remains the only individual to have trekked solo from the tip of Canada to the geographic North, without receiving fresh supplies of food or equipment on his journey. Since that monumental achievement, in 2003, he has campaigned tirelessly to protect the Central Arctic Ocean, most recently through his organisation 90 North Foundation. In this special extended episode, initially recorded for Seacourt Sustainable Printing Company, he talks about the determination that has driven him since he was a small boy, what he’s learnt about life as an explorer, and how to fight off a polar bear with a porridge pan.
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9 Apr 2026
Peter Fretwell
Peter Fretwell is the world’s leading expert on emperor penguins. He’s also the author of a fascinating book published last year, called The Penguin Book of Penguins, which draws on his 20 years working with them at the British Antarctic Survey. As the International Union for the Conservation of Nature officially announces that the emperor penguin is an officially endangered species, Peter talks to Drink the Wild Air about his love of the bird, and what we can do to help save it.
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24 Feb 2026
Dave Stewart
Dave Stewart is one of the great musical chameleons of our time, a serial innovator and inspirational collaborator who became known to millions when he and Annie Lennox formed the Eurythmics in the early Eighties. In this interview with Drink The Wild Air, he talks about working with Nelson Mandela, his musical love affair with Mick Jagger, and how a German avant-garde record producer inspired him and Lennox to develop the Eurythmics’ distinctive style. He also talks about his visionary new venture-building company, Rare Entity, which supports artists who want to hang on to their originality and their intellectual property in the age of AI. There’s all this, and some great anecdotes too about Bob Dylan, George Harrison and Roy Orbison to name just a few.
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15 Mar 2023
Harry Parker
We live in an age where the relationship between humans and machines has never been closer. In his extraordinary book about how people relate to technology, Hybrid Humans, Harry Parker explores the limits of what the human body can be. Since his accident when he was a soldier in Afghanistan, in which he lost both his legs, he has become acutely aware of what technology can and can't achieve. Our relationship with everything from our mobile phones to our cars makes us all hybrids, he argues. But as an amputee he has found himself on the frontier of the latest scientific research, looking at everything from the latest prosthetics to the very nature of humanity itself.
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6 Feb 2023
Sacha Dench
Sacha Dench made headlines around the world in 2016 when she took to the air in a paramotor to follow the migratory route of the Bewick’s swan. Her extraordinary journey was as scientifically important as it was spectacular – she was dubbed the "Human Swan" – and in 2020, as a result of her work, she was made UN Ambassador for Migratory Species. In this episode she talks about how, as Co-Founder and CEO of Conservation Without Borders, she continues to carry out critical work raising awareness about climate change. Among other things she tells the story of how last year she made headlines again when she followed the migratory route of the osprey from Scotland down to Guinea in West Africa.
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30 Jan 2023
Dr. Alexy Karenowska
What is digital archaeology? In recent years its different uses have included recreating monuments destroyed by ISIS attacks, working out the smells of different texts including the Magna Carta and, most provocatively of all, asking why the Elgin Marbles should stay in Britain. In 2012 the Institute for Digital Archaeology was founded in Oxford by Executive Director Roger Michel. Drink the Wild Air visits London’s Oriental Club to interview Alexy Karenowska, the Institute’s Director of Technology, who oversees everything from the guerrilla scanning of ancient artefacts to reproducing them in stone through 3D printing techniques.
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23 Jan 2023
Dr Thomas Smith
We think we understand fire because we have experienced it, yet most of our intuitions are wrong. As the wildfire crisis continues to intensify, Drink The Wild Air talks to Dr Thomas Smith, a pioneer in the science of wildfire and Associate Professor In Environmental Geography at the London School of Economics. He has travelled all over the world to test out a unique method he has devised for measuring the gases produced by large-scale infernos. Here he talks to us about everything from his early experiences of forest fires to a hairy experience involving over-sized ants.
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16 Jan 2023
Heïdi Sevestre
For French glaciologist, Heïdi Sevestre, the story of what's happening to the world's ice is the story of what's happening to us all. Last year a panel of polar experts awarded the 35-year-old the Shackleton Medal for the Protection of the Polar Regions for her pioneering work, not least on an Arctic expedition where she was forced to bury herself in the snow to survive a freak storm. It was just one sign of how much more dangerous her profession as a glaciologist has become due to global warming. Here she explains why everything from 'monster' glaciers in Svalbard to rituals with indigenous Columbians are part of her - and our - future.
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9 Jan 2023
Victor Vescovo
Victor Vescovo is a record-breaking deep sea explorer. At a point where it seems that no part of the world is unmapped, he has defied physics to go where no human has gone before. In the first episode of 'Drink The Wild Air', he talks to us about the link between deep sea exploration and outer space, the terrifying potential of undersea warfare, and the psychological importance of visiting shipwrecks.
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