Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps

it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream

van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. Today, from white to green

via the pens of some of our greatest nature writers, I'm Eleanor Rosamond Barclough and thanks for listening to this episode of New Thinking.

Welcome to today's program, where in the words of Tolkien's tree beard, we've got something that

will keep you green and growing for a long, long while.

Three hundred years ago, the clergyman Gilbert White was born.

Groundbreaking naturalist and owner of an amorous tortoise named Timothy,

Gilbert White went on to write the natural history and antiquities of Selborne,

which has been through some 300 editions since it was first published in 1789.

Today I'm joined by three people who've been thinking about nature writing, past and present

for one of our conversations in our series New Thinking,

which looks at some of the latest research from UK universities.

So I'm going to let them introduce themselves and tell us about something in nature that they've really looked at recently.

So Lucy Jones, let's start with you.

I'm Lucy and I am an author and journalist.

My latest book is called Losing Eden, Why Our Minds Need the Wild.

And I've recently been very drawn to geometry in nature and

patterns. So looking at different shapes of seed heads, which are starting to come up, and also

fractals, which is an element in nature, which I research for my book because it has significant therapeutic

benefits, and now I see them everywhere.

Duff with Mills, Daniel, what about you?

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