Free Thinking - Mystics and Reality: Joanna Kavenna, Dorothy Cross, Jo Dunkley, New Generation Thinker Edmund Richardson.
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 14 June 2016
⏱️ 44 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Artist Dorothy Cross, author Joanna Kavenna, the cosmologist Jo Dunkley and our second 2016 New Generation Thinker historian Edmund Richardson from Durham University join Matthew Sweet for a programme recorded in Oxford exploring mysticism and its role in a timeless search for reality.
Joanna Kavenna's novel A Field Guide to Reality is published at the end of June.
Dorothy Cross is displaying art as part of Mystics and Rationalists - it runs from June 11th to August 7th as part of the Kaleidoscope series celebrating 50 years of Modern Art Oxford.
Edmund Richardson has published Classical Victorians: Scholars, Scoundrels & Generals in Pursuit of Antiquity.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to find academics who can turn their research into radio programmes. Find out more from our website and hear them introducing their research in the programme which broadcast on May 31st - available as an arts and ideas podcast.
Producer: Jacqueline Smith
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 |
| 0:27.0 | when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.5 | Is the light good enough in here, do you think? |
| 0:34.9 | Yes, I think so. I think I can read these. |
| 0:40.3 | How did you acquire these pieces of paper? Well, for many years, I was collecting them. |
| 0:42.3 | I had this idea that every time I encountered someone in any context, any setting, I would |
| 0:48.3 | ask them this question, really, which is the question, the philosophical question that no one |
| 0:52.3 | has ever really answered. |
| 0:53.3 | What is reality? What is reality? |
| 0:54.4 | What is reality? And I would gather together these scraps, because of course knowledge is this |
| 1:00.1 | accumulation of theories, scraps, possibilities. And I would place them in this envelope box. |
| 1:06.5 | And that would be a compendium of theories, with no authority but just theories. |
| 1:13.5 | Well, okay, we'll open the envelope and show me what you've got inside there. |
| 1:16.9 | Give me a bit of reality. |
| 1:20.0 | Okay. |
| 1:21.2 | Reality is the past, present and future, |
| 1:24.5 | the spirit that drifts between life and death. |
| 1:28.7 | Reality is something that at least one person thinks is real. |
| 1:35.3 | Reality is a bubble. Perhaps I've just punctured it. |
| 1:40.8 | Reality is a tyrant. Reality is a pig. |
... |
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