A Small Matter of Hope
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 3 January 2020
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Life is getting better. Child mortality rates have tumbled worldwide, more girls are in education, malaria is in decline and hunger is a thing of the past for most of us. So why don't we believe it? Why are so many of us convinced that we're heading for hell in a handcart?
It's a question that really bothers the editor of the Spectator, Fraser Nelson. Is it the fault of journalists like him, peddling conflict and disaster rather than tales of human progress? Or are we all born with a negativity bias? Do we seek out stories of death and danger just as our ancestors listened out for sabre-toothed tigers padding ever closer to our cave?
In search of answers Fraser meets some of the best-selling thinkers on human happiness- Harvard psychology professor, Steven Pinker, author of Notes on a Nervous Planet, Matt Haig and co-author of Factfulness, Anna Rosling Ronnlund.
Armed with the combined intellectual heft of these purveyors of positivity Fraser returns to his Whitehall office to persuade his cynical staff that the world is crying out for a new Spectator with a positive spin.
Producer: Alasdair Cross
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This was an impregnable fortress. The only way you get out was in a wooden box. |
| 0:05.0 | The controversial maximum security prison impossible to escape from. |
| 0:09.0 | And one of the duties of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.0 | The IRA inmates who found a way. of a political prisoner is the escape. |
| 0:12.5 | The IRA inmates who found a way. |
| 0:14.5 | I'm Carlo Gableer and I'll be navigating a path |
| 0:19.5 | through the disturbing inside story of the biggest jailbreak in British and Irish history. |
| 0:25.0 | The narrative that they want is that this is a big achievement by them. |
| 0:28.5 | Escape from the maze, listen first on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:35.0 | BBC Sounds. BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts. |
| 0:39.0 | Hi, I'm Riana Dylan, and this is seriously. |
| 0:44.0 | So what's in the news today then? |
| 0:50.0 | Pretty grim stuff, riots in India, screwdriver killer gets life. Love Island presenter |
| 0:57.6 | accused of assault. I'm Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, and around this time each week I have to decide what to put in my magazine. We've got arts, some culture, of course, some gossip, plenty of humour, but overall we try to stay ahead of a news agenda. |
| 1:15.4 | And I have to say, things can look pretty miserable. |
| 1:18.6 | The UK is facing a crisis because of the rapid rise in the number of people living with dementia. |
| 1:27.0 | John's one of thousands of patients in Northern Ireland now waiting years for routine operations. |
| 1:32.0 | Small groups of Catalan separatist protesters have been burning the dustbins all around the stadium. |
| 1:36.0 | This has been bugging me for quite some time. |
| 1:38.0 | You see, the world is getting a lot better, |
| 1:41.0 | but the news just doesn't reflect that. This is an incredible country. |
| 1:44.9 | There has never been a better time to be young, to be old, never a better time to be alive. |
... |
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