Robert Macfarlane will be delivering the 2026 BBC Radio 4 Reith Lectures

Throughout the series, titled The Human Superiority Complex, Macfarlane will argue that this belief has become deeply rooted in Western thought, and has helped bring the planet to the brink of catastrophe.

Each lecture will take one of the four classical elements as its focus:

The first lecture, Earth: The Ladder and the Web, traces the rise and consolidation of the ‘human superiority complex’ –– the belief we are perched atop a ladder of life, rather than entangled in a web –– beginning with one of the earliest works of world literature, The Epic of Gilgamesh.

The second lecture, Air: The Great Thinning, uses birds to examine some of the consequences of human exceptionalism, and shows how recent scientific breakthroughs are disclosing the superpowers of other life-forms, thereby challenging the paradigm of our uniqueness

The third lecture, Fire: Deep-Time Thinking, argues for ‘deep-time’ perspectives in both our politics and our story-telling, such that we can become better ancestors to future generations.

The final lecture, Water: The Geography of Hope, takes rivers and water as its focus, exploring some of the extraordinary ways in which law and democratic structures are being radically re-imagined in order to give voices, votes and even rights to rivers, oceans, whales and mountains.

Robert Macfarlane says “It feels both a great honour and a big responsibility to be this year’s Reith Lecturer, at a time when what is at stake in our relations with the larger living world is nothing less than everything. In my view, the solutions to the crisis we find ourselves in lie in imagination as well as legislation; in stories as well as science. I want these lectures to be urgent, hopeful, vivid and surprising; I hope they will spark debate, touch hearts and open minds.”