Summary
From spiritual cleanliness to purity spirals: Matthew Sweet is joined by guests including David Aaronovitch; Catherine Coldstream, author of Cloistered – My Years as a Nun; Linda Woodhead, Professor of the Sociology of Religion at King's College, University of London; Izabella Scott, author of The Bed Trick; and Louise Brangan, author of The Fallen: The Magdalene Laundries and Ireland’s Legacy of Silence. They’ll be discussing ideas of purity in political ideology, religion, anthropology and the experiences of teenage girls.
Producer Luke Mulhall
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:07.4 | I'm Dilley Carter and I love organising. |
| 0:11.6 | In my brand new podcast, sort your life out, unpacked, celebrity guests join me to unbox three revealing items from their home. |
| 0:18.7 | Oh, wow. I wasn't expecting this. Along the way, I'll be giving you practical hacks to help you declutter your life as well. This is the tough love I need. Don't hold back. I'm definitely tucking you with me back to my house. Sort your life out, unpacked. Watch on EyePlayer, listen on BBC Sounds. You're listening to the Arts and Ideas podcast with me, Matthew Sweet. |
| 0:40.0 | I'd like to begin with a reading from the Gospel according to Matthew. |
| 0:43.9 | Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. |
| 0:47.9 | Which might make you wonder how many people actually get to see him. |
| 0:52.2 | And it might make you think, the heart, pure, that place that |
| 0:55.9 | W.B. Yates called a foul rag and bone shop, big ass god, and yet he asks it, and so do other |
| 1:04.1 | religious traditions. Purity is a concept that's simple in chemistry and metallurgy, but that |
| 1:10.6 | only describes a fraction of its human uses. |
| 1:14.1 | It's present in the way that we talk about justice, sex and gender, emotion. |
| 1:19.3 | It's in our moral and political culture. |
| 1:22.1 | And what a week it's been for detecting specks or more than specks of, well, |
| 1:27.1 | something in the conduct and character of politicians. |
| 1:31.0 | And with all this comes the idea that purity might be an overrated virtue or not a virtue at all. |
| 1:38.3 | Water can never be too pure, but in politics, purity can produce spirals or atrocities. We have guests ready for the |
| 1:47.5 | purity test. I shan't ask them are they or have they ever been or to produce their papers, |
| 1:52.7 | but I will be asking them to consider the value and the danger of purity in alphabetical order, |
| 2:00.0 | of course, no favouritism here. |
| 2:01.6 | The journalist and political commentator David Aronovich is here. |
| 2:05.7 | David, once when we had you on to discuss your communist childhood, you sang a song for us. |
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