- BEST-SELLING AUTHOR
- AWARD-WINNING BROADCASTER
- NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORER
- TED TALKER
- ZOOLOGIST
A bit more about Lucy
OXFORD WITH DAWKINS
Lucy studied zoology under Richard Dawkins at New College, Oxford where she specialised in evolution and animal behaviour. She left academia to become an award-winning writer, producer and presenter of documentaries for both TV and radio. Lucy is also the author of four books, which have been translated into over 20 languages, and a columnist for BBC Wildlife magazine. She is, at heart, a story-teller with a reputation for mixing rigorous cutting-edge science, in-depth investigation and a wry sense of humour to reveal surprising truths about the natural world.
BEST SELLING AUTHOR
Lucy is a New York Times best-selling author whose books have won awards and been translated into over 20 languages. Her latest book BITCH was published in the UK and US to widespread critical acclaim and chosen as one of the 50 best books of 2022 by the Telegraph. BITCH has already made it onto the syllabus of major international universities like Princeton and UCL (where Lucy has also lectured on the book). It has also been adapted into the series Political Animals for BBC Radio 4 and is being developed into a TV documentary series.
“Cooke demolishes much of what you probably learned about the sexes in biology class. This may be disconcerting, even confronting for those who feel comfortable in the warm embrace of Darwinian order. But it’s also exciting, and fascinating, and very well might change the way you see the world.” —Science News
Lucy’s previous book, The Unexpected Truth About Animals, was shortlisted for two prestigious awards: The Royal Society Science Book prize 2018 (UK) and the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize (US). Selected chapters have been turned into animations for TED-Ed animations and featured on numerous podcasts, including two episodes of RadioLab.
LIVE BROADCASTING
Lucy is an experienced live broadcaster. In 2018 she joined the Springwatch team on BBC2, as a roving reporter and co-hosting the live broadcast. The same year she also co-hosted The Beach Live (nominated for a Broadcast award in 2019) with historian Dan Snow (BBC4) and was one of the presenters on the ambitious Easter Eggs Live (Channel 4)
Lucy’s far-reaching knowledge and quick wit has seen her pitted against the great Chris Packham as his opposing team captain on the BBC2 natural history quiz show Curious Creatures. Lucy also flexed her animal expertise in the US on the Animal Planet series Nature’s Strangest Mysteries: Solved.
PODCASTS
Lucy loves podcasts and is a regular on BBC Radio 4. In 2022 she hosted Political Animals inspired by her book BITCH. She also hosts the occasional Power of … documentary strand, which has now been turned into an audiobook Both series were highlighted on Radio 4’s Pick of the Week.
Lucy’s a regular guest on BBC Radio 4 comedy panel shows like Sue Perkin’s Nature Table, The Infinite Monkey Cage and The Museum of Curiosity, discussion shows like Women’s Hour, Midweek and Cerys Matthews (Radio 6). In the US she’s a regular on NPR’s RadioLab, A1, Weekend Edition and Diane Rehm’s On My Mind. She’s guested on dozens of podcasts including Clear + Vivid with Alan Alda and First Person with Lulu Garcia-Navarro for the New York Times.
JOURNALISM
Lucy has a regular column for BBC Wildlife magazine entitled The Female of the Species. She writes book reviews for the New York Times and the Guardian. Her journalism has appeared in Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Sunday Times, Telegraph, Daily Mail, Huffington Post, Globe and Mail (Canada). She has written features for The Idler, Significance and Perspective magazines. Her Amphibian Avenger blog, highlighting her adventures investigating the amphibian extinction crisis became a cult hit and was described by the Times as ‘an internet sensation.’
Lucy’s passion to raise awareness about the planet’s less popular animals through innovative storytelling led to her being anointed as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2015.
PUBLIC SPEAKING
Lucy is a highly sought-after public speaker helping to educate and inspire on a range of subjects from ‘a revolutionary guide to being female’, ‘exploding myths about sex and gender’ to ‘sustainability tips from the sloth’. In 2022 she was invited to speak at the Royal Institution, Cambridge university, UCL, Durham university, the festival of dangerous ideas in Sydney, TED Vienna, Singapore Writers Festival, the Natural History Museum in London, The Smithsonian in Washington DC, Seattle Town Hall, Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Glastonbury music festival, The Idler festival, JP Morgan HQ, Gartner HR conference at the O2 and dozens of literary festivals.
NATURAL HISTORY TV
Lucy is a familiar face of natural history broadcasting in both the UK and US. She began her presenting career hosting Freaks and Creeps (National Geographic Wild), a series based on her passion to highlight the weird and wonderful lives of species that often get over-looked in favour of charismatic megafauna.
Since then Lucy has presented a number of primetime series in the UK for BBC 1 (Talk to the Animals, Nature’s Boldest Thieves, Animals Unexpected, Nature’s Miracle Orphans and Ingenious Animals) BBC2 (Springwatch) BBC 4 (Inside the Bat Cave) and ITV (Amazing Animal Births)
AWARD-WINNING PRODUCER
Lucy spent the first half of her broadcast career as a writer/producer/director of primetime television documentary series for PBS, BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery, which took her to the furthest corners of the planet to film remote people and places. She drank honey wine with the fiercest tribe in East Africa, politely ate dog with the opium growing mountain people of Laos, hung out with cave-dwelling Kurdish activists in Turkey and met a fearsome jaguar hunter in Brazil.
THE RAPID RISE OF THE SLOTH
Lucy is the founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society and one of the world’s leading experts on the strange biology of the sloth. She has been documenting their strange lives for over ten years. Her sloth viral videos have been watched by millions and featured on GMA, Ellen, Tonight with John Oliver, and more earning her a reputation as ‘the Steven Spielberg of sloth filmmaking.’ She wrote and produced the award-winning ‘Meet the Sloths’ documentary, which became a major international series for Animal Planet. She still returns to Costa Rica every year to photograph sloths for her best-selling sloth calendars, money from which is helping to rewild degraded sloth habitat with the Sloth Conservation Foundation. Lucy’s sloth photos have appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazines and formed two best-selling books.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Lucy’s photographs of sloths have graced the cover of National Geographic Young Explorer as well as her annual best-selling Sloth Appreciation Society calendar. She’s produced two books of her sloth photos: A Little Book of Sloth was a NY Times best-seller and won the Keystone State Reading Book Award 2015. Her latest best-seller, Life in the Sloth Lane, mixes mindfulness tips with Lucy’s photos of Nature’s masters of mellow taking it very easy indeed.
Lucy’s passion to raise awareness about the planet’s less popular animals through innovative storytelling led to her being anointed as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2015.
OXFORD WITH DAWKINS
Lucy studied zoology under Richard Dawkins at New College, Oxford where she specialised in evolution and animal behaviour. She left academia to become an award-winning writer, producer and presenter of documentaries for both TV and radio. Lucy is also the author of four books, which have been translated into over 20 languages, and a columnist for BBC Wildlife magazine. She is, at heart, a story-teller with a reputation for mixing rigorous cutting-edge science, in-depth investigation and a wry sense of humour to reveal surprising truths about the natural world.
PUBLIC SPEAKING
Lucy is a highly sought-after public speaker helping to educate and inspire on a range of subjects from ‘a revolutionary guide to being female’, ‘exploding myths about sex and gender’ to ‘sustainability tips from the sloth’. In 2022 she was invited to speak at the Royal Institution, Cambridge university, UCL, Durham university, the festival of dangerous ideas in Sydney, TED Vienna, Singapore Writers Festival, the Natural History Museum in London, The Smithsonian in Washington DC, Seattle Town Hall, Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, Glastonbury music festival, The Idler festival, JP Morgan HQ, Gartner HR conference at the O2 and dozens of literary festivals.
BEST SELLING AUTHOR
Lucy is a New York Times best-selling author whose books have won awards and been translated into over 20 languages. Her latest book BITCH was published in the UK and US to widespread critical acclaim and chosen as one of the 50 best books of 2022 by the Telegraph. BITCH has already made it onto the syllabus of major international universities like Princeton and UCL (where Lucy has also lectured on the book). It has also been adapted into the series Political Animals for BBC Radio 4 and is being developed into a TV documentary series.
“Cooke demolishes much of what you probably learned about the sexes in biology class. This may be disconcerting, even confronting for those who feel comfortable in the warm embrace of Darwinian order. But it’s also exciting, and fascinating, and very well might change the way you see the world.” —Science News
Lucy’s previous book, The Unexpected Truth About Animals, was shortlisted for two prestigious awards: The Royal Society Science Book prize 2018 (UK) and the AAAS/Subaru SB&F Prize (US). Selected chapters have been turned into animations for TED-Ed animations and featured on numerous podcasts, including two episodes of RadioLab.
NATURAL HISTORY TV
Lucy is a familiar face of natural history broadcasting in both the UK and US. She began her presenting career hosting Freaks and Creeps (National Geographic Wild), a series based on her passion to highlight the weird and wonderful lives of species that often get over-looked in favour of charismatic megafauna.
Since then Lucy has presented a number of primetime series in the UK for BBC 1 (Talk to the Animals, Nature’s Boldest Thieves, Animals Unexpected, Nature’s Miracle Orphans and Ingenious Animals) BBC2 (Springwatch) BBC 4 (Inside the Bat Cave) and ITV (Amazing Animal Births)
LIVE BROADCASTING
Lucy is an experienced live broadcaster. In 2018 she joined the Springwatch team on BBC2, as a roving reporter and co-hosting the live broadcast. The same year she also co-hosted The Beach Live (nominated for a Broadcast award in 2019) with historian Dan Snow (BBC4) and was one of the presenters on the ambitious Easter Eggs Live (Channel 4)
Lucy’s far-reaching knowledge and quick wit has seen her pitted against the great Chris Packham as his opposing team captain on the BBC2 natural history quiz show Curious Creatures. Lucy also flexed her animal expertise in the US on the Animal Planet series Nature’s Strangest Mysteries: Solved.
AWARD-WINNING PRODUCER
Lucy spent the first half of her broadcast career as a writer/producer/director of primetime television documentary series for PBS, BBC, Channel 4 and Discovery, which took her to the furthest corners of the planet to film remote people and places. She drank honey wine with the fiercest tribe in East Africa, politely ate dog with the opium growing mountain people of Laos, hung out with cave-dwelling Kurdish activists in Turkey and met a fearsome jaguar hunter in Brazil.
PODCASTS
Lucy loves podcasts and is a regular on BBC Radio 4. In 2022 she hosted Political Animals inspired by her book BITCH. She also hosts the occasional Power of … documentary strand, which has now been turned into an audiobook Both series were highlighted on Radio 4’s Pick of the Week.
Lucy’s a regular guest on BBC Radio 4 comedy panel shows like Sue Perkin’s Nature Table, The Infinite Monkey Cage and The Museum of Curiosity, discussion shows like Women’s Hour, Midweek and Cerys Matthews (Radio 6). In the US she’s a regular on NPR’s RadioLab, A1, Weekend Edition and Diane Rehm’s On My Mind. She’s guested on dozens of podcasts including Clear + Vivid with Alan Alda and First Person with Lulu Garcia-Navarro for the New York Times.
THE RAPID RISE OF THE SLOTH
Lucy is the founder of the Sloth Appreciation Society and one of the world’s leading experts on the strange biology of the sloth. She has been documenting their strange lives for over ten years. Her sloth viral videos have been watched by millions and featured on GMA, Ellen, Tonight with John Oliver, and more earning her a reputation as ‘the Steven Spielberg of sloth filmmaking.’ She wrote and produced the award-winning ‘Meet the Sloths’ documentary, which became a major international series for Animal Planet. She still returns to Costa Rica every year to photograph sloths for her best-selling sloth calendars, money from which is helping to rewild degraded sloth habitat with the Sloth Conservation Foundation. Lucy’s sloth photos have appeared on the cover of National Geographic magazines and formed two best-selling books.
JOURNALISM
Lucy has a regular column for BBC Wildlife magazine entitled The Female of the Species. She writes book reviews for the New York Times and the Guardian. Her journalism has appeared in Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The Sunday Times, Telegraph, Daily Mail, Huffington Post, Globe and Mail (Canada). She has written features for The Idler, Significance and Perspective magazines. Her Amphibian Avenger blog, highlighting her adventures investigating the amphibian extinction crisis became a cult hit and was described by the Times as ‘an internet sensation.’
Lucy’s passion to raise awareness about the planet’s less popular animals through innovative storytelling led to her being anointed as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2015.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
Lucy’s photographs of sloths have graced the cover of National Geographic Young Explorer as well as her annual best-selling Sloth Appreciation Society calendar. She’s produced two books of her sloth photos: A Little Book of Sloth was a NY Times best-seller and won the Keystone State Reading Book Award 2015. Her latest best-seller, Life in the Sloth Lane, mixes mindfulness tips with Lucy’s photos of Nature’s masters of mellow taking it very easy indeed.
Lucy’s passion to raise awareness about the planet’s less popular animals through innovative storytelling led to her being anointed as a National Geographic Emerging Explorer in 2015.