Free Thinking - Charles Kingsley's Water Babies
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2014
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As a musical version of The Water Babies opens Simon Heffer and New Generation Thinker Corin Throsby discuss the ideas of Charles Kingsley. Matthew Sweet talks about literary satire with novelist Edward St Aubyn. Plus we mark today's anniversary of Roger Bannister's 4 minute mile by talking to documentary maker Sally McLean about her current film project which profiles the Viennese running coach Franz Stampfl.
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, it's 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 at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right? |
| 0:23.4 | It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.9 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.2 | On tonight's free-thinking, Edward St Orbin, the novelist whose home territory has until now been angst, addiction, and abuse, |
| 0:40.0 | tells us that for him, writing isn't the horrible experience it once was, |
| 0:44.3 | and will resurrect the Mystic, who, 60 years ago today, helped Roger Bannister to run the four-minute mile. |
| 0:51.0 | It wouldn't have happened unless we had been a team, Chris Brasher, Chris Chatterway and |
| 0:57.4 | France. I mean, sit down with France and you came out a couple of hours later, you know, |
| 1:03.3 | believing that if you could break a world record, I mean, it would be like painting the Mona Lisa. |
| 1:08.9 | The runners, Christopher Chatterway and Roger Bannister |
| 1:11.6 | acknowledged their debt to the mysterious Fran Stamphal. |
| 1:15.4 | Later, we'll catch up with the filmmaker to whom they told their story. |
| 1:19.4 | First, though, we enter another mysterious realm, |
| 1:22.3 | an underwater world through which move salmon, |
| 1:25.2 | Cadis larvae, and a many tentacled Victorian manifesto. |
| 1:29.3 | A mama on the hillside, a whisper through the trees, a message someone sending a secret on the breeze. |
| 1:39.3 | A voice that's full of magic, a voice I've never heard. |
| 1:45.6 | A feeling no annoying. |
| 1:48.3 | I know it sounds absurd. |
| 1:50.9 | A conversation in the end. |
| 1:54.5 | Lauren Samuels at Curve Lester, performing Waiting for You from Water Babies, |
| 2:00.1 | a new musical by Ed Curtis, Guy Jones and Chris Egan, |
... |
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