Free Thinking: The importance of networks; the art of dance.
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 3 October 2017
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Niall Ferguson talks to Philip Dodd about a less hierarchical history. Jane Munro looks at Degas's depictions of the human body. Sarah Lamb describes dancing MacMillan's ballets.
The Square and the Tower: Networks, hierarchies and the struggle for global power by Niall Ferguson is out now. Degas - A Passion for Perfection runs at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge until January 14th 2018. Jane Munro has edited a catalogue containing essays to mark the centenary of Degas's death which is published by Yale University Press.
Kenneth MacMillan - A National Celebration - featuring 6 ballet companies from across Britain - takes place at the Royal Opera House between October 18th and November 1st.
Producer: Robyn Read
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 when it's |
| 0:27.5 | out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.1 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:36.9 | Hello, I'm Philip Dodd. I do hope you enjoy this podcast from Radio 3's Free Thinking. |
| 0:44.3 | Dancing is poetry with arms and legs. So said that great French poet Baudelaire. Well, not much later in Paris, Edgar Degar was trying to make visual poetry with his paintings, |
| 0:56.0 | drawings and sculptures of dancers at rest and at work. |
| 1:00.8 | We'll look sooner to major new show of his work, and we'll also talk with a ballet dancer |
| 1:05.6 | about the choreography of Kenneth Macmillan, often called the angry young man of ballet, who died 25 years ago |
| 1:13.4 | and who wanted to make people feel uncomfortable in the theatre. But first, a conversation with |
| 1:20.0 | historian Neil Ferguson. All of us know that the language and the reality of networks are vital |
| 1:26.0 | to us now. But in his new book, Ferguson argues that networks, |
| 1:30.3 | political, social and cultural have been very important across history. |
| 1:35.3 | That Illuminati and the grammatic symbol has been considered a myth for 400 years. |
| 1:40.3 | By now, I think that most people see that social networks are going to be a ubiquitous tool used by billions of people around the world to stay connected every day. |
| 1:50.5 | In an ultimate sense, the Chinese think they're impervious to foreign cultural pressure. |
| 1:58.5 | Tom Hanks in the Da Vinci Code, Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg and statesman |
| 2:03.0 | Henry Kissinger, all of who appear in Neil Ferguson's The Square and the Tower. |
| 2:08.1 | For this historian, the square represents networks, the space of free markets, and the tower |
| 2:13.9 | hierarchy. In one chapter, he explores how the hierarchy of the Catholic Church |
| 2:19.0 | was challenged by the networks that Luther and the Gutenberg Press posed. But this book |
... |
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