Light and Dark
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 13 June 2018
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Illumination and darkness: Laurie Taylor is joined by Tim Edensor, Reader in Cultural Geography at Manchester Metropolitan University, and author of a study into the ways in which light and dark produce everyday life and the stories we tell about ourselves. In examining the modern city as a space of fantasy through electric illumination, he considers how we are seeking-and should seek-new forms of darkness in reaction to the perpetual glow of urban lighting. They're joined by Robert Shaw., lecturer in geography at Newcastle University, who has studied the relationship between night and society in contemporary cities. He claims that the economic activity of the 'daytime' city has so advanced into the night, that other uses of the night as a time for play, for sleep or for escaping oppression have come increasingly under threat.
Producer: Jayne Egerton.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. Are you at all frightened of the dark? You may well be after this. |
| 0:37.0 | Some years ago I had a really good night out in this little pub in rural Wicklow, plenty of drink, lots of laughs, and as the evening went on chorus after chorus of classic Irish songs. |
| 0:50.0 | But it was all so warm, so companionable that I waved my friends away as closing time approach. |
| 0:56.0 | Look, you know, don't worry about me, I'll make my own way home. |
| 0:59.0 | It's only half a mile, isn't it? |
| 1:00.0 | Straight down the hill, straight down the hill. |
| 1:02.0 | Right, see you later then. |
| 1:05.0 | But it must have been around about midnight |
| 1:08.0 | as I walked away from the lights of the pub |
| 1:10.0 | and began to look for my path that I ran into something that I'd never in my life |
| 1:14.8 | encountered before complete and utter darkness. I can remember I remember waving my |
| 1:22.0 | arm in front of me as though I thought it all be swept away like smoke. |
| 1:26.8 | But this darkness had the thickness of a blanket. |
| 1:30.0 | It almost seemed to press against me like an alien being. |
| 1:34.0 | Well it was only as I was reading a new book with the intriguing title from light to dark that I |
| 1:38.8 | realized how infrequently we ever encounter such such total absence of light and what such absence must have meant to those historical beings for whom it was synonymous with nighttime. |
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