Revisit: Encylopedias and Knowledge from Diderot to Wikipedia
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 4 May 2020
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jimmy Wales talks Diderot & collecting knowledge + Tariq Goddard on Mark Fisher aka k-punk. The French writer Diderot was thrown into prison in 1749 for his atheism, worked on ideas of democracy at the Russian court of Catherine the Great and collaborated on the creation of the first Encyclopédie. Biographer Andrew S. Curran and Jenny Mander look at Diderot's approach to editing the first encyclopedia. Plus writer and publisher Tariq Goddard on the work and legacy of his collaborator and friend, the critical theorist Mark Fisher who analysed the culture of Capitalism following the economic crash of 2008. Shahidha Bari presents.
Diderot and the art of Thinking Freely by Andrew S Curran is out now. k-punk: the collected and unpublished writings of Mark Fisher (2004-2017) edited by Darren Ambrose is out now.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
You can find a playlist of programmes on the Free Thinking website on The Way We Live Now exploring ideas from boredom, to whether doctors should cry? the joy of sewing to ideas about consent. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p072637b
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 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. |
| 0:28.9 | Listen to Evil Genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:37.1 | Did you know that the word quarantine comes from quarantina, |
| 0:40.6 | meaning 40 days in 14th century Italian? |
| 0:43.8 | There are so many new things to find out about at the moment, |
| 0:47.4 | especially if you're doing a spot of homeschooling. |
| 0:50.0 | What on earth is a frontal verb? |
| 0:52.3 | This encyclopedic episode of the Arts and Idas podcast is for you. |
| 0:56.8 | I'll be talking to Jimmy Wales about how he founded Wikipedia |
| 1:00.1 | and finding out about the radical blogger and thinker K-punk, aka Mark Fisher. |
| 1:05.9 | Join me, Shahidabari, just after this. |
| 1:09.2 | Hello, I'm Verity Sharp, and with us all in lockdown, time can hang heavy and things can get a little bit claustrophobic. |
| 1:18.7 | So I'm here just to encourage you to go to the one place where you can fly free, and that's your imagination. |
| 1:26.1 | And with Radio 3's Slow Radio Podcast, there is no limit to where we can go with that. |
| 1:32.8 | You can go there to listen to the sounds of birds, you can visit the mountains, or you can |
| 1:38.0 | remember our once bustling cities. |
| 1:41.1 | You can hear tales of seals and selky folk or listen to rain on a hot tin roof or discover |
| 1:48.4 | the secrets of an ancient cathedral. It's all there. Just step back and immerse yourself |
| 1:54.5 | and search for slow radio on BBC Sounds. Hello, cats always land on their feet, |
| 2:02.7 | and buttered toast always lands butter side down. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.