How to Turn Your Life Around
Seriously...
BBC
4.1 • 885 Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2016
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What does it take to succeed if you are born into poverty and neglect? Two people who have done just that explore whether it was down to personality, circumstances or plain luck. Why do so few people manage it?
Byron Vincent, a writer and poet, and Dr Anna Woodhouse, a university lecturer and outreach worker, talk to experts to try and discover if their own triumph over lives that were blighted by abuse, drug addiction, homelessness and hunger could have been predicted. They talk to experts about the sort of traits an individual needs to overcome adversity, things like resilience, grit and will power, and discover the latest thinking on what really helps. They explore the way science is looking at the role of genes in determining character. And they look at the importance of outside forces; education, family support, mentors and the role of the Government. At the end, they discuss what they have found with former Welfare Minister and current Chair of the Work and Pensions Select Committee Frank Field, to see what government can do to help lift individuals out of poverty and get them to turn their lives around.
Producer: Jenny Sneesby.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi and |
| 0:05.0 | B.C Radio 4's home for curious and captivating documentaries. |
| 0:12.0 | I'm Femme Martin. On this edition we join writer and poet Byron Vincent and university lecturer and outreach worker Dr Anna Woodhouse as they investigate what it takes to overcome adversity against all the odds. |
| 0:25.9 | This is how to turn your life around. |
| 0:27.5 | Hello, I'm Byron Vincent and I am Anna Woodhouse. One of the things we have in common, apart from our dulcit northern |
| 0:35.8 | drawl, is that we managed to turn our lives around when it all looked pretty grim. We both |
| 0:40.9 | had rough starts in life, and we've been through a lot, poverty, abuse, drugs and despair. |
| 0:47.0 | I've been in the cells underneath Sheffield courts. I remember the slot on these old Victorian doors opening up and this copper sticking his |
| 0:55.2 | face through and saying the other gun crime charge today's just got nine years good |
| 0:59.7 | look son like you know as if to, like you're going down next. |
| 1:03.4 | Fortunately, that's all history. |
| 1:06.0 | These days I live amongst the conspicuously middle class trappings of Bath and Erma living as a writer, |
| 1:11.0 | and Anna works and teaches at Leeds University. Yeah Dr Anna |
| 1:15.9 | Woodhouse I do feel that that doctor gives me a certain kildos you know enjoy it. I can't say that I don't. It's really nice. I'm proud of what I've achieved. |
| 1:29.0 | We first met after recording talks for Radio 4's forethought. For us us being asked to share our thoughts |
| 1:34.9 | on the nation's favorite thinky station felt like another incremental move |
| 1:38.8 | away from our former lives. But we've always wondered what it was about us that allowed us to make that change. |
| 1:45.0 | How can we manage to do it when others who might want to don't? |
| 1:49.0 | What was the secret of our transformation and can other people copy it? |
| 1:53.6 | So in this program we'll be investigating how to turn a life around. |
| 1:58.4 | We'll be looking at leading research in the field and trying to unpick important turning points in our own lives. |
| 2:04.7 | So where to start? |
... |
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