The three-part dialogue series Die Natur des Menschen is recorded for the WDR 3 Forum in cooperation with the cultural radio station WDR 3 as part of the WDR 3 cultural partnership. In conversations with Mi-Yong Becker, Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker and Thomas Macho, the Swiss writer Lukas Bärfuss explores the phantasms and, together with his guests, seeks a new answer to the old question: What is this, the nature of man?

Here you can listen to the three talks in the WDR3 Podcast Mediathek:

Dialogue I: Natur und Verbrechen (online)

Dialogue II: Natur und Erlösung (online)

Dialogue III: Natur und Arbeit (online)

About the series:

The relationship between human beings and nature can best be described as rather neurotic and certainly unbalanced, shifting from one extreme to the other. At one point Mother Gaia keeps everything in equilibrium. Then again, her laws are nothing but a school of cruelty – eat or be eaten. And there are illusions everywhere: rural regions that we regard as natural are really biological deserts. While in urban regions like the Ruhr, lilies bloom, peregrine falcons go hunting and yellow-bellied toads croak in between industrial chimneys and areas of wasteland.

Our view of nature is conditioned by desires and fears and those projections say more about us as people than they do about the object of our attention. However, in the 21st century and in the face of looming climate catastrophe, we need to stop and think. Our society has to find a new relationship with nature.