Richard Fisher

Journalist, author, speaker and editorial consultant

About

- A Senior Journalist with the BBC in London, writing and commissioning feature-length stories for the website BBC Future.- The author of a non-fiction book called The Long View: Why We Need to Transform How the World Sees Time (Wildfire, March 2023).- An Honorary Research Associate at University College London, teaching a module on the MSc Science Communication course.- A freelance editorial consultant, speaker and writer.My work spans science, technology, health, history and philosophy, and I am particularly interested in stories and ideas within the themes of long-term thinking and time perception. As a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at MIT from 2019-20, I researched the history and causes of short-termism, the psychology of time, and the long view of humanity and the planet. My book The Long View, published 30 March 2023, explores these ideas in depth. I also write a newsletter called The Long View: A Field Guide.

• Buy my book: The Long View

Writing & Editing

• The Long View: A Field Guide
• The benefits of 'deep time thinking'
• Why we’re trapped in short-term thinking and how to take the long view (New Scientist)
• How the long view makes the present meaningful (Vox)
• Humanity is stuck in short-term thinking. Here’s how we escape (MIT Tech Review)
• The Norwegian library with unreadable books
• The perils of short-termism: Civilisation's greatest threat
• The "Deep Civilisation" season
• The numbers too big to imagine
• The upsides of feeling small
• The environmental case for buying a coal mine
• Why we need new words for life in the Anthropocene
• The mysterious doodles hidden in a 1,300-year-old book
• The super-clocks that define what time it is
• How the next 'supercontinent' will form
• How to turn yourself into a fossil
• What TV medical shows get right - and wrong
• Why teenagers aren't what they used to be
• Generational amnesia: The memory loss that harms the planet
• Are we living at the 'hinge of history'?
• The invisible impact of 'slow violence'
• The long-term quest to build a galactic civilisation
• Time capsule 2020: The 37 objects that defined the year
• The unseen man-made 'tracks' on the deep ocean floor
• Anthropo-scene: The images that define our age
• Social cryptomnesia: How societies steal ideas
• The fiasco of the 1976 'swine flu affair'
• The clever folds that kept letters secret
• Streetonomics: What our addresses say about us

Interviews & talks

• New Scientist Weekly podcast
• MIT fellowship profile - Knight Science Journalism 19-20
• European Science-Media Hub on short-termism
• Global News Toronto on the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine trial
• Taking Time: The Long Term View
• ABC Future Tense: Our long-term battle with short-term thinking
• RSA Oceania: Deep Time Dreamers

Connect

• Enquiries about The Long View book
• Sign up for my newsletter: The Long View: A Field Guide
• Book agent: Kate Evans - Peters, Fraser + Dunlop

If you have a PR enquiry, please contact me at the BBC

• Twitter
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Mastodon
• Medium

Praise for The Long View‘A captivating guide... The Long View is simply crammed with interesting ideas. This is a beautifully turned, calmly persuasive but urgent book.’
     Ian McEwan, novelist and screenwriter’A wise, humane book laced with curiosity and hope. It will open your mind and horizons – and leave you giddy at the prospect of all that we may yet become.’
     Tom Chatfield, author of How to Think'Utterly brilliant. Profoundly thought-provoking, and at times movingly personal, The Long View is a crucial exploration of our relationship with time. Full of lessons from our past and hope for the future, this is the essential roadmap for how we can successfully navigate the coming centuries.'
     Prof. Lewis Dartnell, author of The Knowledge‘Hope-filled and revelatory … Beautifully readable and scholarly, rich and personal, this book shows how, to leave a robust legacy for the future, we need to overcome our bias for the present.’
     Rowan Hooper, author of How to Spend a Trillion Dollars‘A soaring hymn to all that might lie in the future; alongside the diverse and beautiful ways to think about it. Overflowing with wisdom and insight.’
     Thomas Moynihan, author of X-Risk‘Few books can claim to shake your perspective on life, but The Long View does exactly that … a landmark book that could help to build a much brighter future for many generations to come.’
     David Robson, author of The Expectation Effect‘The Long View is a manifesto calling for a radical reconception of our relationship with time. Richard Fisher documents the social, psychological, and economic reasons we have become stranded on the Island of Now – and charts routes for us to get back to the mainland.’
     Marcia Bjornerud, author of Timefulness'A compassionate, beautifully considered meditation on how we think about the future, and why that needs to change.'
     Michael Bond, author of Wayfinding'Urgent and profound. Richard Fisher's The Long View shows how thinking differently about time can change the world. The future begins with how we imagine it. This is essential reading for anyone who wishes to be a good ancestor.'
     David Farrier, author of Footprints'Philosophical, insightful and entertaining. In a world of short sightedness, The Long View is a helpful guide to understand and connect us to the future. In the light of the climate emergency, long term thinking is more urgent than ever.'
     Andri Snær Magnason, author of On Time and Water'A hope-fueled path toward the twenty-third century. Lucidly written, The Long View challenges us to remove our temporal blinkers and embrace a more long-minded awareness of humanity’s future possibilities. An astounding read.'
     Vincent Ialenti, author of Deep Time Reckoning'Some of our greatest powers derive from our ability to think about the future ... a fascinating tour of long-mindedness, and why it matters.'
     Prof. Thomas Suddendorf, co-author of The Invention of Tomorrow'This is a war book. It’s about the struggle for a view of time that gives us a chance of survival. It’s immaculately researched, splendidly written and an antidote to despair.'
     Charles Foster, Literary Review‘The Long View is sprawling in its coverage, but clear throughout, and offers a compelling vision of how so many strands of human thought have come together to support long-term perspectives.’
     Tyler Cowen, TLS