This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. This lecture in the series

Climate of Fear, given by Wolle Shoyinka, was originally broadcast in 2004.

Good evening and welcome to Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, the academic home for the past

five years of this

year's wreath lecturer Wolle Shoyinka. This is the fifth and final lecture of the series in which

he set out to analyse the symptoms and causes of the climate of fear, which has become a

defining characteristic of the world in which we live at the beginning of the 21st century.

Poet, playwright and Nobel Prize winner, Professor Shoyinka has spent a lifetime campaigning

against tyranny. His activities led to his imprisonment in his native Nigeria and forced him

into decades of exile, much of it spent here in the United States. Through the previous four lectures in this

series, he's argued that the climate of fear must be assuaged through dialogue. He's maintained that

while the rhetoric of political leaders may bind people together, it can also blind them to the

truth. He believes that the restoration of dignity, particularly to

the dispossessed peoples of the Middle East, could play a significant part in resolving the

conflicts that bedevil the region, conflicts which many believe lie at the heart of the climate

of fear. Tonight, in conclusion, Wally Shoyinka focuses on the nature

of what he calls

the most dangerous

being on earth,

the fanatic.

And he finds

fanatics everywhere.

...