Free Thinking - London's Skyline & Joshua Ferris
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2014
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Matthew Sweet discusses online identity theft and religious belief with American novelist Joshua Ferris, as he publishes his new novel To Rise Again at a Decent Hour. As the London Festival of Architecture opens with a debate on whether London needs more tall towers, Matthew talks to Sir Terry Farrell, Owen Hatherley, Nicholas Boys Smith, Angela Brady, about how London should look in the future. And we head to the Foundling Museum, whose latest exhibition marks the 250th anniversary of the death of William Hogarth to find out how artist Jessie Brennan has re-imagined ‘A Rake’s Progress’ without people, just a famous London tower block.
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 |
| 0:27.0 | when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.9 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.0 | On tonight's free thinking, you get sex and the city, |
| 0:35.0 | will be inspecting the panels of Hogarth's Arrake's Progress and discovering |
| 0:39.1 | how David Hockney and Grayson Perry responded to its warnings directed at young men who have nothing |
| 0:44.9 | to lose but their money, their sanity, their genital health and their wigs. And we'll look upward too. |
| 0:50.8 | The skyline of the UK's capital is growing tumest with high-rise structures. |
| 0:55.7 | 230 new ones are on their way. |
| 0:58.5 | It's proved an enormous topic at this month's London Festival of Architecture, |
| 1:02.6 | where last night they asked, does the capital need more tall towers? |
| 1:06.6 | There's all kinds of things you can do with London property. |
| 1:09.1 | The one thing it doesn't need is to go high. |
| 1:11.6 | We can do London very well without skyscrapers. We don't need them. You may like them, I may not, but we don't need them. |
| 1:18.6 | Opposed the motion. Thank you. |
| 1:20.6 | I mean, the things that get said about Tall building is so peculiar. |
| 1:24.6 | Tall buildings cause crime. Well, forgive me for bringing it up, |
| 1:28.9 | but I was under the impression |
| 1:30.7 | that the cray twins were brought up |
| 1:33.1 | in immaculate, low-rise |
| 1:35.3 | terrace housing in Hackney, |
... |
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