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The theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli celebrates the life of an ancient Greek philosopher, in Anaximander And The Nature Of Science (translated by Marion Lignana Rosenberg). He tells Adam Rutherford that this little known figure spearheaded the first great scientific revolution and understood that progress is made by the endless search for knowledge. Anaximander challenged conventions by proposing that the Earth floats in space, animals evolve and storms are natural, not supernatural.The travel writer Kapka Kassabova has gone searching for ancient knowledge about the natural world in her latest book, Elixir: In the Valley at the End of Time. The Mesta River, in her native Bulgaria, is one of the oldest inhabited rivers in Europe, and a mecca for wild plant gatherers, healers and mystics. In Dvořák’s lyric opera the eponymous hero Rusalka is a water spirit who sacrifices her voice and leaves her home for the love of a Prince. In a new contemporary staging at the Royal Opera House (21 February–7 March 2023) the co-directors Ann Yee and Natalie Abrahami foreground the uneasy relationship between nature and humanity, and the latter's destruction of what it fails to heed.Producer: Katy HickmanImage credit: Asmik Grigorian in Natalie Abrahami and Ann Yee’s Rusalka, The Royal Opera ©2023 Laura Stevens

The psychologist Kimberley Wilson lays bear the truism ‘we are what we eat’. In Unprocessed: How the Food We Eat is Fuelling our Mental Health Crisis she bring into sharp focus the known links between diet, brain, behaviour and mental health. She tells Tom Sutcliffe how the government’s failure to address poor nutrition is a catastrophe.Rebecca O’Connell’s research focuses on the social, cultural and economic reasons that shape what children and families eat, and the part food plays in their everyday lives. With the cost of living crisis and an increase in families suffering food poverty, she looks at the capacity to ‘choose’ to buy healthier food, and what other countries, like Portugal, have achieved in prioritising school meals. But what about the food itself and how it’s grown? The author of The Ethical Carnivore, Louise Gray, turns her attention to fruit and veg in her latest book, Avocado Anxiety And Other Stories About Where Your Food Comes From. Tracking from farm to table, Gray discovers the impact that growing fruits and vegetables has on the planet.Producer: Katy Hickman

Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth is ruthless in her pursuit of power and then driven into madness and despair. But the writer and director Zinnie Harris has re-imagined a new story for Lady Macbeth in her version of this classic play. Macbeth (an undoing) - published by Faber - is on at The Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh until 25th February.Marion Gibson is Professor of Renaissance and Magical Literatures at the University of Exeter and is interested in how power and superstition collide in witch-trials through the centuries. In her latest book, The Witches of St Osyth, she tells the story of the sixteen women and one man accused of sorcery in a small rural village in 1582, and of a community devastated by violence and betrayal.The filmmaker Jo Ingabire Moys draws from her own experience of surviving the Genocide in Rwanda in her short film Bazigaga, shortlisted for a BAFTA. As violence erupts a Tutsi pastor and his young daughter take shelter in the home of the feared shaman Bazigaga. The film was inspired by the true story of Zura Karuhimbi who used her reputation as a witch doctor to save hundreds of lives.Producer: Katy HickmanImage: The actor Eliane Umuhire in 'Bazigaga', written and directed by Jo Ingabire Moys