Free Thinking - Tim Minchin, David Cronenberg
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2014
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Canadian filmmaker and originator of the body horror genre, David Cronenberg covers topics as wide ranging as consumption, cancer, and creativity as he talks about his debut novel and new film. Shami Chakrabarti discusses her work as a human rights campaigner, and the idea of anger as a motivating force. Plus Tim Minchin on turning Storm, a poem he performed in a live set, into a graphic novel.Presenter: Matthew Sweet. Producer: Ella-mai Robey
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 is some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. Thank you, Jonathan. |
| 0:33.4 | Tonight we poke about in the viscera of David Cronenberg. the film director and now novelist whose bloody fantasies may be our bloody future. |
| 0:42.7 | To consume, to buy, to create products that are meant to be consumed |
| 0:47.4 | is the way of the future, is in fact something delightful and forceful |
| 0:52.8 | and sexually satisfying and emotionally satisfying. |
| 0:57.5 | David Cronenberg, later you'll hear him on desire, disease, |
| 1:01.5 | and the new moral world that he believes is being born right now online. |
| 1:06.1 | We'll also invoke the power of anger and ask whether, morally and politically, |
| 1:10.4 | it's a useful or a self-defeating |
| 1:12.2 | emotion. The human rights campaigner Shami Chacrabati, the Reverend Giles Fraser, and the forensic |
| 1:17.4 | psychotherapist Cleo Van Velson are all here, grinding their teeth and ready to let rip. |
| 1:23.0 | We'll kick off, though, with an Olivier Award-winning lyricist, who once had a bad-tempered conversation |
| 1:28.1 | at a dinner party and turned it into a polemic about the value of rationalism. |
| 1:34.7 | Pharmaceutical companies are the enemy. They promote drug dependency at the cost of the natural |
| 1:39.8 | remedies that are all our bodies need. They are immoral and driven by greed. Why take drugs when |
| 1:45.5 | herbs can solve it? Why use chemicals when homeopathic solvents can resolve it? I think it's time |
| 1:50.9 | we all return to live with natural medical alternatives. And try as I like, a small crack appears |
| 1:58.3 | in my diplomacy dike. |
| 2:03.5 | By definition, I begin. |
| 2:05.7 | Alternative medicine, I continue, |
... |
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