Francis Fukuyama, Olga Tokarczuk, Alev Scott, Michael Talbot.

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 18 October 2018

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What's it like to be banned from your own country or to have your writing spark a row? Rana Mitter's guests talk identity, borders, forest landscapes and the long impact of the Ottoman empire. The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama is associated with the phrase "the end of history". His latest book Identity: The Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment looks at what he sees as the threats to Liberalism.

Alev Scott has travelled through 12 countries, talking to figures including warlords and refugees for her book Ottoman Odyssey: Travels Through a Lost Empire but she can't return to her birthplace. She's joined by New Generation Thinker Michael Talbot who teaches at the University of Greenwich and whose research has uncovered the drunken antics of soldiers in post World War I Istanbul. He's a contributor to http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/ and he reviews Like a Sword Wound by Ahmet Altan -published now in an English translation by Yelda Türedi and Brendan Freely. It's the first book in the Ottoman Quartet, a narrative that spans the history of Turkey during the decline of the Ottoman Empire. The writer is now in prison for life.

The Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk won the 2018 Man Booker International Prize for her novel Flights. Her latest novel to be translated into English by Antonia Lloyd Jones is called Drive Your Plow over the Bones of the Dead and became the film Spoor directed by directed by Agnieszka Holland. Her writing has been called anti-Catholic.

You can find more discussions about borders, home and belonging in this playlist of programmes https://bbc.in/2QALzkL

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 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	Hello, I'm Rana Mitter, and this is the Arts and Ideas podcast from BBC Radio 3.
0:42.4	Our guests include historians, authors, artists and thinkers, people interested in thinking afresh
0:47.9	about links between past and present, and the way that their art and writing reflects trends
0:52.5	in the contemporary world. So in just a minute, we're going to join today's gang in the studio.
0:57.0	But first, could you just take a moment to listen to this?
1:00.1	Did you know that Mozart was so infuriating he was called a clown and a knave
1:04.9	and given a kick-up the behind by the Archbishop of Salzburg's steward,
1:09.1	or that Chikovsky's family censored his diaries
1:11.8	to hide the fact he was gay.
1:14.1	Ever hear of J.S. Bach, the street brawler?
1:17.9	The Composer of the Week podcast introduces you
1:20.3	to the human side of the men and women
1:22.1	who created our greatest classical music.
1:25.1	Subscribe to Composer of the Week with me, Donald Pekleod, wherever you
1:28.9	get your podcasts. There's a treasure trove of music and stories waiting for you to explore,
1:34.1	and a new composer to discover, well, every week. Identity is the crisis, can't you see?
1:40.8	The words there of the late political philosopher and punk goddess, Polis
1:44.3	Styrene, from the band X-ray Specks back in the 1970s.
	...

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