You're about to listen to a BBC podcast and I'd like to tell you a bit about the

podcast I work on. I'm Dan Clark and I commissioned factual podcasts at the BBC.

It's a massive area but I'd sum it up as stories to help us make sense of the forces shaping the world.

What podcasting does is give us the space and the time to take brilliant BBC journalism

and tell amazing compelling stories that really get behind the headlines.

And what I get really excited about is when we find a way of drawing you into a subject

you might not even have thought you were interested in.

Whether it's investigations, science, tech, politics, culture, true crime, the environment,

you can always discover more with a podcast on BBC Sounds.

Thank you for downloading the Life Scientific from BBC Radio 4.

There is often a conflict between conserving nature's riches and maximising GDP,

especially in a country as crowded as Britain. But my guest today has worked tirelessly

to keep living things other than humans high on the political agenda. A nature lover with the head for politics,

John Lawton has advised successive governments

on a huge range of environmental issues,

GM crops, transport planning, noise pollution, nuclear waste, you name it, he's thought about it.

And most recently, and perhaps closest to his heart, nature conservation.

In the 80s, John invented the Ecotron, which was essentially a

slice of nature in a box to study how different ecosystems behave under

different conditions.

Imperial College London had to reinforce the first floor to accommodate several large

soil-filled chambers.

...