Summary
Elites: Laurie Taylor explores the anti elitism which has become a common staple of media commentary and political rhetoric. He talks to Eliane Glaser, Reader in Creative Writing at Bath Spa University, and author of a new study arguing that we are taking aim at the wrong enemy and confusing a corporate elite, which does pose a threat to many of us, with people who make our lives worth living, even save our lives – from doctors and lawyers to writers and artists. Are we letting the ‘real’ elite off the hook? They’re joined by William Davies, Professor of Political Economy at Goldsmiths, University of London, whose latest book takes stock of our historical moment and claims that the basic norms of public life have been thrown into question, as the status of political parties, mainstream media and public experts have been undermined.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.5 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:31.6 | Hello, like other pimply teenagers in the 1950s, I could take my pick from any number of |
| 0:38.4 | cultural icons. There were novels by J.D. Salinger, plays by Tennessee Williams, music from Elvis and Chuck Berry, |
| 0:47.0 | films with Marlon Brando, the magnificently moody Marlon. |
| 0:52.0 | But in my high-minded lower-middle-class home, none of these luminaries ever assumed |
| 0:58.4 | quite a lofty and unassailable place in our pantheon of celebrities as Cyril Edwin Mitchinson Jode, C-E-M-Jode, the English philosopher and longtime contributor to the BBC's Brainsrust, a program of such popularity in |
| 1:15.8 | British homes that had earned a full-page strip all to itself in the Children's |
| 1:20.3 | comic radio fun. |
| 1:22.8 | My mother-in-father were not at all deterred by Jodes' elite background, his years at |
| 1:27.8 | Balliol College, his home in Hampstead, his upper-class speech patterns. |
| 1:32.7 | What mattered was his intelligence, his constant ability to sound as though he knew everything |
| 1:38.4 | about that of which he spoke. |
| 1:40.8 | Here he is pronouncing on the political differences between the left and the right. |
| 1:45.0 | I think the main difference is a difference in the belief in human nature. |
| 1:50.0 | If you are on the left you believe on the whole that human beings are |
| 1:53.8 | improvable possibly indefinitely improbable and you only got to pass the right |
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