Daily: Bulletproof Confidence, Blunted Empathy – How boarding schools produce warped leaders

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 14 April 2021

⏱️ 25 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The English public school is one of the country’s strangest and often most sinister institutions. James Scudamore, author of the moving and gripping novel of memory, friendship and abuse English Monsters, talks to Arthur Snell about his own experience with the mad and petty regime of the English boarding school. How did this culture spread the “profound damage” of men who’d seen true horror in war down to generations of pupils? And why do public schools produce an emotionally damaged elite? “There’s a special toxicity in that closed world of elitism and privilege.” “That blend of extremely rigid rules and the psychopathy of the punishments… it’s incredible that these things were still going on as late as the 80s.” “One thing you have to do to survive is to completely shut down your empathy. And another is to fall into extreme flippancy.” Presented by Arthur Snell. Produced by Andrew Harrison. Assistant producers Jelena Sofronijevic and Jacob Archbold. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Audio production by Alex Rees. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
0:13.0	I loved going to college.
0:14.0	It's good you can retrain and do something.
0:16.0	Yeah, yeah.
0:17.0	Let's talk about working, learning, saving and making the most of living longer.
0:22.0	Phoenix Group is the UK's largest long-term savings and retirement business.
0:28.0	Search Phoenix Group living longer.
0:30.0	Pets brings so much joy.
0:32.0	From those happy greetings at the door to the warm cuddles on the sofa
0:36.7	so give a little love back with dental life from Purina a range of delicious chues made for dogs and tasty snacks for cats that help clean and support your pets, teeth and gums, essential for their overall well-being and a happy, healthy life. They give you plenty of smiles so look after
0:55.9	theirs with dental life. Pick up dental life in the pet food aisle. Hello and welcome to the bunker I'm Arthur Snow. We're in a week where once again reports of sexual abuse have featured heavily in the media, in part as a result of the everyone's invited website recording testimonials from abuse survivors at schools and universities.
1:25.0	It's therefore very timely that we're being joined today by James Scootermore,
1:29.6	whose novel English monsters are moving, gripping and disturbing story about friendship, about
1:36.2	childhood but also about abuse, which came out earlier this month.
1:40.5	We've got James here today in the bunker.
1:42.2	James, welcome.
1:43.0	Thank you for having me. Great to be here.
1:45.0	James, as I mentioned, your novel came out in paperback this month.
1:50.0	I think it would be great if we just jump straight in and you sort of set the scene a little, tell the
1:55.9	listeners what the novel's about and what kind of themes are explored there.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Podmasters, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Podmasters and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.