Free Thinking - Gut Instinct
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 12 May 2015
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matthew Sweet is joined by former Labour strategist Alastair Campbell, epidemiologist and advocate for a healthy gut Tim Spector, journalist Michael Goldfarb, and Dr Luke Evans to consider the role our guts play in matters of politics, culture and beyond. Art historian and biographer Frances Spalding offers her verdict on a new ballet from Wayne McGregor, Woolf Works. And ahead of receiving an honorary Palme D'Or at Cannes this year, octogenarian Agnes Varda discusses her double life as celebrated filmmaker and artist.
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. |
| 0:32.1 | And welcome to Freethinking, the program with Guts, the Deutian, denum, the colon and the Iliam. |
| 0:47.0 | No more curried eggs for me. That's what's happening in Colonel Bloodlock's stomach. |
| 0:51.4 | But how about yours? Now Britain has had time to digest the result |
| 0:55.3 | of the general election. We'll explore that part of the body where success or failure, defeat or |
| 1:00.7 | victory seems to be registered first. The Conservative candidate Dr Luke Evans, the Labour Big Beast |
| 1:06.6 | Alistair Campbell and the cultural commentator Michael Goldfarb are here live to tell us how it felt |
| 1:12.0 | down here in the gut. The geneticist Tim Specter is here too to explain what was happening |
| 1:17.9 | at the microbial level. And we'll also find out what's churning inside the veteran French |
| 1:23.1 | film director Agnes Varda. First though, Virginia Woolf. Is she dancing? |
| 1:28.1 | Are we asking? |
| 1:29.0 | If we're asking, then she's dancing. |
| 1:54.0 | Music A taste of Wolf Works, a new Covent Garden Ballet, by Mrs. Dalloway, Orlando, The Waves, and by the life and death of their author. |
| 1:59.4 | It's the work of the choreographer |
| 2:00.8 | Wayne McGregor and the composer Max Richter and it was seen for us last night by the |
| 2:05.4 | biographer and art historian Francis Spalding. Francis, this is a tripartite work that borrows the |
| 2:11.3 | words and the imagery from three of Wolfe's novels, but the night begins with the recording |
| 2:15.9 | of Wolf's voice made in |
| 2:17.5 | 1937. What was she telling you from the dark? Well, it was completely unexpected for me |
| 2:23.3 | that the auditorium went dark as it always does, and suddenly we heard the voice of Virginia |
... |
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