Night Waves - China's Silent Army
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 30 January 2013
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rana Mitter & Susannah Clapp review a new production of Simon Gray's Quartermaine's Terms starring Rowan Atkinson. Rana also talks to Neil Shubin about his new book, the Universe Within, which traces the history of the cosmos in the human body. In another new book co-author Juan Pablo Cardenal along with Professor O.A. Westad discuss China's Silent Army and whether their investments abroad have sinister and disturbing implications? And Rana talks to Nihad Sirees and Malu Halasa about writing in Syria.
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, it's 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 | that 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. |
| 0:32.1 | This is a download from the BBC. For more information and our terms of use, go to BBC.co.uk slash radio three. |
| 0:41.1 | Tonight, we'll find out how sex and lingerie have played out in Syria's revolution, with one of that country's major novelists. |
| 0:49.6 | We're always seeing stardust on nightwaves, but science superstar Neil Shubin shows us why |
| 0:54.8 | we're actually made of it and what that tells us about the future of scientific research. |
| 1:00.1 | And we're on the hunt for a silent army. |
| 1:02.6 | We'll debate whether Beijing's mission is to take over the world. |
| 1:06.9 | But first, if you want to define a gold dust theatre ticket, let's put Richard Eyre in the |
| 1:12.1 | director's chair, and how about Rowan Atkinson in the lead role? |
| 1:16.3 | Well, that's precisely the line-up in the West End, as a new production opens of Simon |
| 1:20.6 | Gray's play Quatermain's Terms. The action takes place in the early 1960s at a low-rent |
| 1:26.2 | language school in Cambridge, |
| 1:32.1 | and the quarter-main of the title is a tutor of long-standing and dubious competence. |
| 1:36.2 | The play lies in that world of dysfunctional families and senior common rooms that Gray made his own, with understated loneliness at its core. |
| 1:41.0 | He felt really rotten about messing up your evening. |
| 1:45.8 | Oh, do tell him no need to worry about that, because as it happened, a few minutes after he phoned to cancel, old Henry phoned |
| 1:50.9 | to invite me around there. So that was all right. Oh, how smashing. For dinner, you mean? |
| 1:56.9 | Well, no, to babysit, actually. Oh. They suddenly remembered there was a film at the arts, |
| 2:02.8 | some old German classic that they seem very fond of, |
| 2:06.7 | about a child murderer, as far as I could make out from what Henry said. |
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