Free Thinking in the Summer - Hay
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 3 July 2013
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Philip Dodd discusses the Problem with Love with behavioural scientist Dylan Evans, television presenter Esther Rantzen, Costa Prize-winning author AL Kennedy and singer and writer Pat Kane. Is it bad for us? How does love alter our brains and our bodies? What impact will social media and changing gender relations have on the future of love? The edition is was recorded at the recent HowTheLightGetsIn philosophy and music festival as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking in the Summer.
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 | This is a download from the BBC. |
| 0:34.1 | For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three. |
| 0:40.9 | What's love got to do with it, cries the immortal Tina Turner. |
| 0:45.3 | Well, it has to do with almost everything, as it turns out. |
| 0:49.6 | Evolutionary biologists think it's hardwired into us. |
| 0:53.4 | Where would artists from Shakespeare to Jane Austen be without it, or Wagner or Joni Mitchell, for that matter? And loves big business, not least now as companies spring up as solitaries in cities crave love. And think of the film careers of Hugh Grant and Jennifer Aniston. They've made |
| 1:12.8 | their fortunes and their careers by being bewildered by love on the screen. But hold on for a minute. |
| 1:20.5 | Love, romantic love, it's clearly vital, but is it really good for us? Anna Karenina suggests otherwise, as does Plato, who describes love as a serious mental disease. |
| 1:35.3 | And social media doesn't help, it obliges all of us to be in almost continuous touch with our loved ones, |
| 1:43.3 | which it turns out phrase our feelings, |
| 1:47.0 | according to recent research. Perhaps that old commodgian Oliver Goldsmith, who wrote she stooped |
| 1:52.9 | to conquer, was right, friendship is a disinterested commerce between equals, love and abject |
| 2:00.5 | intercourse between tyrants and slaves. |
| 2:04.3 | Well, Nightwaves here in Hay explores whether love is good for us, with the award-winning |
| 2:09.1 | novelist A.L. Kennedy, Pat Kane, singer and songwriter, an author of The Play Ethic, the |
| 2:14.4 | broadcaster Esther Ransson, and Dylan Evans, behavioral scientist and author of emotions, |
| 2:19.7 | a very short introduction. |
| 2:31.0 | A.L. Kennedy, Alison, I want to begin with you. |
| 2:33.4 | Do you think love is good for you? No, it's terrible.L. Kennedy, Alison, I want to begin with you. Do you think love is good for you? |
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