Free Thinking - Stephen Poliakoff and Linda Grant; Yuval Noah Harari.

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 599 Ratings

🗓️ 2 November 2016

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

A TB clinic in the countryside is the location of Linda Grant's new novel which follows a Jewish brother and sister from the East End who are sent to recover in an institution where the class divide persists even as the new National Health Service challenges this. Stephen Poliakoff's new BBC drama series follows an intelligence officer whose final Army role is to ensure that cutting edge technology is made available to the British armed forces. Philip Dodd discusses the period of immediate post-World War II with the two writers. He also talks to historian Yuval Noah Harari who has studied the history of humanity on the planet earth and who argues that the future holds a wider divide between the techno super rich who are looking to cheat death and the useless class who have been superseded by machines.

Close To The Enemy - a 7 part series written and directed by Stephen Poliakoff airs on BBC Two this November. The Dark Circle by Linda Grant is out now. Yuval Noah Harari's books are Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow.

Producer: Fiona McLean

Transcript

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0:00.0	Can I just say?
0:01.5	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast.
0:04.0	It's such a wonderful listen.
0:05.6	So nice.
0:06.5	There are loads more like it on BBC sounds.
0:08.8	Different paces, different heights.
0:10.6	The roof is buckling.
0:11.9	Where you can also listen to live sports commentary.
0:14.2	It's right foot goes for goal.
0:16.7	And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories.
0:21.6	The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession.
0:25.2	And she's had to live with that.
0:26.8	So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion.
0:29.7	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.8	Sort of expecting that every week now.
0:34.6	Welcome to an autumn of reading across the BBC with hashtag love to read. And this week,
0:39.7	Radio 3's free thinking discovers why monks stop reading out loud and why Sir Walter Scott's Waverly
0:44.7	has much to say to our British present. Hello, on tonight's programme, we take our cue from an
0:51.1	unforgettable image of the angel of history blown towards the future, but with
0:57.0	its face turned towards the ruins of the past. Later, we bring together the screenwriter
1:03.2	Stephen Polyakov and the novelist Linda Grant to talk about why both of them are turning
1:08.4	over the immediate post-World War two years to show what we choose
	...

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