Our 2019 cultural roundup: the biggest and best of the year

Life and Art from FT Weekend

Forhecz Topher

Tv & Film, Arts, Society & Culture

4.6 • 601 Ratings

🗓️ 19 December 2019

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

From Lizzo and Fleabag to Greta Thunberg and the Impossible Burger, Lilah and Gris look back at the biggest themes, people and moments of the year. How did we go from talking about 'global warming' to the 'climate crisis'? How has technology opened up the generational divide? And how is culture reflecting the changing conversation around gender, race and representation?

Plus: we asked our FT colleagues for their stand-out moments of 2019! Melissa Ingabire takes on the surprising ascendance of country music, via Lil Nas X and Kacey Musgraves. Alec Russell describes meeting the 89-year-old Irish novelist Edna O'Brien. Jo Ellison explains why Karl Lagerfeld's death marked the end of an era in fashion. And Anna Nicolaou argues that 2019 was a great year for movies - thanks, in part, to streaming platforms like Netflix. The episode rounds out with listener recommendations to help you with your holiday gift list.

We're taking a short break -- we'll be back in late January 2020! Let us know who we should interview and which subjects we should tackle in our second season. You can get in touch on Twitter @FTCultureCall or by email at [email protected]. And if you like the show, the kindest gift you could give us is a review on Apple Podcasts.

Links from the episode, arranged by theme:

Gris's Lunch with the FT with superstar violinist Nicola Benedetti (paywall): https://www.ft.com/content/33ed2b6e-1b3e-11ea-97df-cc63de1d73f4

Climate:

Greta Thunberg has Lunch with the FT: https://www.ft.com/content/4df1b9e6-34fb-11e9-bd3a-8b2a211d90d5

Why renting your wardrobe makes fashion sense: https://www.ft.com/content/f8b1b96c-ffb7-11e9-be59-e49b2a136b8d

Review of Eco-Visionaries exhibition at the Royal Academy (paywall): https://www.ft.com/content/25e8d842-1684-11ea-9ee4-11f260415385

Technology:

Anna Nicolaou on TikTok and how video shaped a generation: https://www.ft.com/content/dd7234e8-fcb9-11e9-98fd-4d6c20050229

John Thornhill's review of Shoshana Zuboff's book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: https://www.ft.com/content/43980f9c-0f5b-11e9-a3aa-118c761d2745

Review of Euphoria on HBO: https://www.ft.com/content/bed942be-b2aa-11e9-bec9-fdcab53d6959

MeToo and female creators:

Rebecca Traister on the toll of MeToo: https://www.thecut.com/2019/09/the-toll-of-me-too.html

Gillian Tett's review of She Said, Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey's account of breaking the Weinstein story: https://www.ft.com/content/02b579fc-d480-11e9-a0bd-ab8ec6435630

Review of Fleabag series two on BBC/Amazon...

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Hello, you're listening to Culture Call, a transatlantic conversation from the Financial Times.
0:11.3	I'm Griselda-Marie Brown in London. And I'm Lila Raptopoulos in New York. And this is our final episode of the year.
0:22.7	Today, we are looking back at the main cultural themes of 2019 and how the year's biggest
0:28.5	works fit into them. So that's books, movies, TV, art, music and memes. Yeah, and this
0:33.8	episode is going to take in pretty much everything from eco-anxiety to Stormsie's glass debris performance to why experimental fiction is having a moment.
0:43.7	We also have some excellent listener recommendations to share with you, and we brought a few of our esteemed editors here at the FT into the studio to tell us their favorite cultural trends and picks of 2019.
0:55.2	After this episode, we're going to be taking a break to work on the second series of Culture Call,
0:59.9	which will be with you in the second half of January. And we'd love to know who you'd like us to
1:04.7	interview and what you'd like us to tackle in the next season. Yes, you can, as always,
1:09.2	email us at CultureCall at FT.com or find us on Twitter
1:12.5	at FT Culture Call. Gris, at this point in the show, we usually share what we've been up to
1:18.8	since we last got on the line. And I know you've been busy writing A Lunch at the FT, which is one of my
1:23.6	favorite financial times institutions. Yeah, it's a big interview piece that runs in the
1:29.2	weekend paper in the Life and Arts section, um, online obviously every weekend. And different FT
1:35.2	writers and editors do the interview every week. I had lunch with Nicola Benedetti, who is a kind
1:41.8	of superstar violinist. She was a child prodigy and led the National
1:46.7	Youth Orchestra when she was eight, I think. Wow. Yeah. By the time she was 16, she won BBC
1:52.8	Young Musician of the Year, which is kind of like the biggest young musician prize you can,
1:57.7	you can win here growing up in Edinburgh, like, Nicola Benedetti was a huge figure there.
2:03.5	She's kind of very glamorous Italian Scott.
2:07.0	My sister was in the same orchestra as her and this was like, you know, star dust.
2:12.2	So it was quite exciting to meet her.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Forhecz Topher, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Forhecz Topher and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.