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Hello, it's Amol here.

Welcome to radical weekly conversations about the deep global trends changing our world, your world, and some radical ideas for how you can win the future.

Talking of that future, you'll have seen in recent days some really shocking news about the state of Britain's rivers.

They are in an emergency. And over the last year, 18 months, maybe a couple of years, lots of

campaigners, people like Fergal Sharkey have been on the radio, on the Today program, interviewed by

people like me, really explaining in depth how it is that so many of our rivers are basically

swimming in sewage. And I'm not easily shocked, but in preparation for today's interview,

I came across some numbers that describe in harrowing detail the astonishing degradation of Britain's

rivers, these incredibly beautiful arteries that have given us towns and villages and cities, but which are increasingly just becoming these brown ribbons full of the most awful pollution or agricultural waste or disease, in which lots and lots of species of our most precious wildlife are struggling to exist.

And on this week's episode is a remarkable man. He's an author. He's a writer. He's a thinker.

He's a professor at the Faculty of English in Cambridge where 20 years ago he taught me.

And he's someone whose books have sold huge numbers of copies because they chronicle the fragility

and the beauty and the urgent need for help in our living world.

His most recent book is called Is a River Alive with a question mark?

He is Dr. Robert McFarlane and he's got, as you're about to hear, some very radical ideas for a complete transformation in our moral, intellectual and cultural relationship

with the rivers that he would argue have made us.

Okay, here we go.

I'm going to call you Dr. McFarlane.

Is that all right?

Once.

And then after that, Robert.

...