Each year, the BBC invites a leading figure to deliver a series of lectures on radio. The aim is to advance public understanding and debate about significant issues of contemporary interest. The fourth and final lecture of writer Robert Macfarlane's series will be delivered and recorded in Amsterdam.

Are you interested in joining? Please RSVP ReithLecturesRSVP@bbc.co.ukExternal link by 11 November. Places are limited.

More on the Reith Lectures

At a time of ecological crisis, extreme weather events and a rapidly heating climate, Robert Macfarlane’s Reith Lectures will examine what is in his view one of the most consequential stories humans tell themselves: that our species stands above and apart from the rest of nature.

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.

Drawing on inspiring examples from around the world, the four lectures will also highlight the scientists, artists, activists, lawmakers and communities who are challenging this worldview and opening the possibility of different, more just futures for life on Earth.

One of our most influential writers on landscape, language and the living world, Macfarlane brings more than two decades of acclaimed work to the lectures. A bestselling author, his books have reached readers around the world, while his collaborations across art, film, music and performance connect ideas from literature, science, culture and public life.

Each lecture will take one of the four classical elements as its focus. 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. This lecture is hosted by UvA’s Faculty of Science.