A Good Read: Professor Ben Garrod and Lucy Jones

Books and Authors

BBC

Society & Culture, Books

4.2 • 824 Ratings

🗓️ 2 December 2024

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A PRIMATE'S MEMOIR (Love, Death and Baboons) by Robert Sapolsky, chosen by Professor Ben Garrod SOLDIER SAILOR by Claire Kilroy, chosen by Harriett Gilbert THE ABUNDANCE by Annie Dillard, chosen by Lucy Jones

Evolutionary biologist Ben Garrod (Professor at the University of East Anglia) chooses a book which he's read and gifted countless times, a book which inspired him to go out in the field and study chimpanzees himself: A Primate's Memoir by Robert Sapolsky. Robert is one of the leading primatologists and scientists today and this is his gripping, at times heartbreaking account of leaving the United States age twenty-one to study wild baboons in the Kenyan savannah.

Lucy Jones (author of Matrescence and Losing Eden) picks an author she has consistently loved for her child-like gift of wonder and close, detailed attention to the natural world. Lucy brings Annie Dillard's collection of essays, The Abundance, for the others to read.

And Harriett Gilbert recommends a fictional tale of early motherhood. A vivid, immersive monologue of a woman on the brink that keeps readers on the edge of their seats to the very end.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast, but this is about something else you might enjoy.
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0:35.0	check out BBC Sounds.
0:41.2	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:45.3	Hello, on these dark winter evenings, what better than a good book?
0:48.3	And maybe a little glass of something, or is that just me?
0:51.8	Anyway, my guests and I are each going to recommend a book we love,
1:00.7	in the hope that you'll like the sound of at least one of them. With me are first Ben Garrard, evolutionary biologist, author and broadcaster, whose TV credits include Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard. Ben's latest book, Jack, a
1:06.1	dog in Africa, came out this year. With him is the journalist Lucy Jones who writes on ecology, health and science,
1:13.0	and whose four books include Losing Eden, Why Our Minds Need the Wild, and Matressants on the
1:19.7	Metamorphosis of Pregnancy, Childbirth and Motherhood. Ben, Garrett, would you start? What are you
1:25.5	recommending as a good read?
1:34.1	Well, I think like many people, to try to boil it down into one book that I think you should give a go and the diversity and broadness of an audience, I went for something that should hopefully appeal to millions.
1:39.7	It's a biography of a biologist who decided to upsticks, go and work in Africa and live with a bunch of baboons.
1:46.2	Okay, so it's a primates memoir by Robert Sapolsky.
1:50.1	Tell us why you love it and why you're recommending it.
1:52.5	It's autobiographical and Bob is a leading academic and researcher and was one of the first to understand the relationship between social
2:01.4	stress and physical manifestations of things like ulcers.
	...

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