Rock, Paper, Saints and Sinners

Arts & Ideas

BBC

Society & Culture

4.2 • 598 Ratings

🗓️ 27 March 2024

⏱️ 14 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A 1660s board game made by a Jesuit missionary sent to the Mohawk Valley in North America is the subject of New Generation Thinker Gemma Tidman's essay. This race game, a little like Snakes and Ladders, depicts the path of a Christian life and afterlife. Gemma explores what the game tells us about how powerful people have long turned to play, images, and other persuasive means to secure converts and colonial subjects.

Dr Gemma Tidman is a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Queen Mary University London and a New Generation Thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to put research on radio. You can hear more from her in Free Thinking discussions about Game-playing, and Sneezing, smells and noses.

Producer: Torquil MacLeod

Transcript

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0:00.0	Can I just say?
0:01.5	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast.
0:04.0	It's such a wonderful listen.
0:05.6	So nice.
0:06.5	There are loads more like it on BBC sounds.
0:08.8	Different paces, different heights.
0:10.6	The roof is buckling.
0:11.9	Where you can also listen to live sports commentary.
0:14.2	It's right foot goes for goal.
0:16.7	And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories.
0:21.7	The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession.
0:25.2	And she's had to live with that.
0:26.8	So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion.
0:29.7	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:31.7	Sort of expecting that every week now.
0:34.7	Hello, I'm Gemma Tidman and in this episode of the Arts and Ideas podcast, I'll be reading an essay I've written.
0:42.0	I'm a new generation thinker on the scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council
0:47.7	to share new academic research. I lecture in comparative literatures and cultures at Queen Mary
0:54.1	University of London,
0:55.9	and my essay has the title Rock Paper Saints and Sinners.
1:01.8	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
1:05.6	The story starts one cool April morning in 1667, in a town in north-eastern France.
	...

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