Summary
Mark Honigsbaum historian of epidemics, literary scholars Lisa Mullen & Sarah Dillon, UNESCO's Riel Miller & philosopher Rupert Read talk with Matthew Sweet. If uncertainty is a feature of our situation at the moment, it's the stock in trade of people who try to think about the future.
Riel Miller is an economist at UNESCO, who works on future literacy. Rupert Read is an environmental campaigner with Extinction Rebellion and is speaking here in a personal capacity. Sarah Dillon is New Generation Thinker and editor of a new book AI Narratives: A History of Imaginative Thinking about Intelligent Machines Lisa Mullen is a New Generation Thinker and author of Mid Century Gothic Mark Honigsbaum is the author of The Pandemic Century: One Hundred Years of Panic, Hysteria and Hubris.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
In the Free Thinking archives: New Generation Thinker Sarah Dillon’s Essay on is science fiction is sexist https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03g2wkp A discussion about Zamyatin’s novel We https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03f8bqz A discussion with Naomi Alderman, Roger Luckhurst and Alessandro Vincentelli on science fiction & space travel https://www.bbc.com/programmes/b04ps158 Matthew Sweet explores psychohistory and Isaac Asimov and guiding the future https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000d84g Naomi Alderman is in conversation with Margaret Atwood https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07xhzy8 Ursula Le Guin's The Word for World is Forest https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0b6yb37 and a New Thinking podcast made with the AHRC in which Hetta Howes talks sci fi with Caroline Edwards and Amy Butt https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p086zq4g
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 |
| 0:21.2 | it. 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. BBC Sounds, |
| 0:34.5 | music, radio, podcasts. Hello, I'm Matthew Sweet and this is the Arts and Ideas podcast. |
| 0:41.4 | We're facing the future on this programme, as all of us are at the moment. |
| 0:45.7 | But what has the coming of the coronavirus done to our sense of what that future will be? |
| 0:51.0 | Stand by for some views and some data after these messages. |
| 0:55.5 | Hello, I'm Jessica Curry, host of the Sound of Gaming podcast. |
| 1:00.0 | If you love video game music or chatting over a cup with some amazing composers as much as I do, |
| 1:05.8 | then you really must come on over and join us. |
| 1:09.1 | I'll be meeting a different composer each week to talk about |
| 1:12.3 | their work in games, chatting about the music in some of my favourite scores and lifting the lid on |
| 1:18.3 | just what us composers are getting up to behind the curtain while you're playing. Search BBC |
| 1:24.4 | Sounds for Sound of Gaming and hit subscribe to listen now. |
| 1:32.3 | Hello, what next? We've all been asking that question. Our children have been asking it of us. |
| 1:39.2 | We've been asking it of politicians and epidemiologists and the guy in the pound shop selling hand sanitizer for 799. |
| 1:46.2 | And it's become a different kind of question in this virus-struck moment of history. We've been |
| 1:52.6 | abandoning our plans, spiking the near futures that we've conceived for spring and summer. |
| 1:58.6 | But something bigger is happening. This has become about more than work |
| 2:02.5 | and holidays and trying to make sure that our friends and our neighbours and our parents are okay. |
| 2:08.2 | It's prompting us to ask what this experience is going to change about our culture and our |
| 2:13.3 | society, about whether there'll be a post-virus period in the way that there was a post-war |
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