Mark Lilla. Owen Hatherley. Gulzaar Barn.
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 12 June 2018
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Mark Lilla could be called the conscience of liberal America. He talks to Anne McElvoy about life after identity politics. 2018 New Generation Thinker Gulzaar Barn discusses whether paying people for taking part in medical trials is different from other forms of "labour". Plus Owen Hatherley's latest book is called Trans-Europe Express: Tours of a Lost Continent. He discusses what makes a European city and who should take responsibility for shaping our urban environment whether its Hull or Thessaloniki with Deborah Saunt from DSDHA - who are working on new plans for the West End of London following the opening of Crossrail stations.
Mark Lilla's new book, The Once and Future Liberal, is a ferocious analysis of the American left’s abdication as well as a call to arms. The time for evangelism - of speaking truth to power is over, he says, now it’s all about seizing power to defend truth.
Gulzaar Barn lectures in philosophy at the University of Birmingham working on moral, political, and feminist philosophy.
New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by BBC Radio 3 with the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics at the start of their careers who can turn their research into radio. You can find a collection of short columns reflecting their research on bbc.co.uk/FreeThinking
Producer: Zahid Warley
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 when it's out of ice cream. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.1 | Hello, I'm Anne McHawoy. |
| 0:34.1 | Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas discussion program, bringing together leading artists, writers and thinkers in conversation and debate. If you enjoy what you hear, do subscribe, search for the Arts and Ideas podcast, wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, please do rate and review us. It'll help other people to find us. |
| 0:57.0 | This is the BBC. |
| 1:02.0 | Hello, a puzzle to begin with as we look at the role of human guinea pigs. If you take part in a clinical trial, should you be paid? And if so, how much? |
| 1:12.3 | Who's responsible for the health of those who take part, who sets the price and who regulates it? |
| 1:17.8 | The more you think about it, the more questions pop into our heads. |
| 1:21.7 | The philosopher Gulzabahn, one of our new generation thinkers, |
| 1:25.3 | will be putting forward her diagnosis later on. |
| 1:28.6 | The Health of the US Left is the subject of Mark Lilla's new book, The Once and Future Liberal. |
| 1:34.6 | Lilla is one of the sharpest commentators on the other side of the Atlantic, |
| 1:38.2 | and he believes a new vision is needed to breathe new life into an ailing body politic. |
| 1:43.4 | We live in a very libertarian society, socially and economically, in a world economy, |
| 1:49.7 | and we've lost the sense that we owe people anything and that we need to instill a sense |
| 1:56.5 | of public duty. But to do that, you need people to feel that they share a destiny together. |
| 2:03.4 | And you need to speak to the nation, to citizens as citizens, and inspire them again to see that |
| 2:10.0 | they owe things to each other and need to be able to count on each other. |
| 2:13.1 | Mark Lilla, we'll be hearing more from him later. Now, though, it's time to leap onto a train, Owen Hathalie's Trans-Europe Express, in fact. |
| 2:22.3 | And we're about to thunder off on a journey that includes Paris, Bologna, Leipzig, Dublin, Le Havre, and many others, |
| 2:30.4 | before finally pulling in at the terminus in Hull. It's an eccentric, exhilarating |
... |
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