Free Thinking: Will Self, R. D. Laing and Mandy.
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2017
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Will Self joins Matthew Sweet to discuss the mind, consciousness, ADHD, Alzheimer’s and PTSD - all woven together in his new novel Phone. Mad to be Normal director, Robert Mullan, talks about the man at the centre of his film, controversial psychiatrist R. D. Laing. Critic Melanie Williams considers Mandy, Alexander Mackendrick's 1952 film about a deaf child learning to find her way in post-war Britain. Mandy was played by the child actress Mandy Miller who recalls her starring role from sixty five years ago.
Will Self's new novel, Phone is out now.
Mad to be Normal is in selected cinemas, certificate 15.
A new restoration of Mandy is out now on Blu-Ray and DVD.
Producer: Craig Templeton 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. |
| 0:32.1 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:41.4 | Thanks for downloading this program from the Free Thinking team at the BBC. |
| 0:48.2 | You don't have to be mad to listen to Free Thinking, but it helps. You don't have to be normal either. |
| 0:56.0 | What would be the use of that? The subjects of this edition of the program are psychiatry and anti-psychiatry, radical therapy and conventional treatment. |
| 0:58.0 | In Will Self's new novel, Phone, an acolyte of the maverick mind doctor R.D. Lang wakes |
| 1:04.0 | up in a Manchester hotel room, his mind as disordered as the soft furnishings. |
| 1:09.0 | We'll talk to Will and enter Lang's world with the help of Robert Mullen, |
| 1:13.4 | who directed David Tennant in the Lang biopic Mad to be Normal. |
| 1:17.5 | And we'll revisit the Ealing film that made a passionate argument |
| 1:21.6 | for bringing deaf children out of the asylum and into the light of the post-war world. |
| 1:26.6 | What's your name? |
| 1:29.6 | Mandy. |
| 1:31.3 | What? |
| 1:33.2 | Monday. |
| 1:34.4 | Her name is Mandy. |
| 1:36.0 | Mandy? Right, get the bat. Come on, let's go. |
| 1:43.9 | Little Mandy Miller is the star of Mandy from 1952. |
| 1:48.4 | The film scholar Melanie Williams will put the picture in context, |
... |
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