Cars, Parking and Motorways
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 30 October 2019
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Where are we? How did we get here, and where are we going?
Our relationship with the self-propelled small metal boxes in which we spend so much of our time is not as simple as it feels.
Why did we learn to need them? How did they shape our cities, our typewriters and our bacon slicers? Should we now redesign our roads, streets and even our skies for AI driven cars? What do we learn by looking at suburban car parks? A discussion reflecting on speed, automobiles, AI and the 60th anniversary of the M1 motorway. Anne McElvoy presents.
Brendan Cormier is curator of the forthcoming exhibition Cars: Accelerating the Modern World, which opens in November. Nicole Badstuber of the University of Westminster studies our commuting habit and the trends in journeying that modern life inflicts on all of us. Jack Stilgoe is a senior lecturer at UCL who studies governance and oversight of emerging technologies, looking in particular at driverless futures. Gareth E Rees is author of Car Park Life, a journal of empty spaces and discarded moment, described as "A Retail Park Heart of Darkness".
M1 Symphony, a soundscape documentary telling the story of Britain’s first motorway, featuring a specially-commissioned composition from former BBC Proms Inspire composer Alex Woolf, performed by the BBC Philharmonic is available to hear if you search for BBC Radio 3's Sunday Feature.
On BBC.com/Ideas you can find a short film exploring the history of motorway service stations
Producer: Alex Mansfield.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.3 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's |
| 0:27.5 | out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:37.0 | I'm Anne McElvoy. |
| 0:38.4 | Thanks for downloading this episode of the BBC Arts and Ideas podcast. |
| 0:42.6 | You might be on the road. |
| 0:44.1 | You might actually be driving. |
| 0:45.8 | Whether you are or not, shortly we'll be taking a scenic tour |
| 0:49.0 | of the impact of the car on our society. |
| 0:51.9 | But first, a brief diversion. |
| 0:54.4 | Hello, I'm Donald McLeod, and I want to tell you about the composer of the week podcast. |
| 0:59.4 | Each week I uncover the human stories behind the men and women who created our greatest |
| 1:04.2 | classical music. Did you know that Mozart once made an Austrian count so furious, he actually |
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| 1:14.9 | to hide the fact that he was gay. |
| 1:17.1 | Ever hear how J.S. Bach drew his sword |
| 1:19.7 | on a belligerent bassoonist. |
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... |
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