Rummage - Waste
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 8 July 2020
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rummage & waste: Laurie Taylor talks to Emily Cockayne, Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at the University of East Anglia, about the overlooked story of our throwaway past, from ladies of the First World War who turned dog hair into yarn to Girl Guides inspired to collect bottle tops by the litter collecting Wombles of Wimbledon. What lessons can be drawn from the past to address urgent questions of our waste today? Patrick O'Hare, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, joins the conversation and considers our shifting definitions of waste, from domestic homes in the Global North to the rubbish dumps of Uruguay.
Producer: Jayne Egerton
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Take some time for yourself with soothing classical music from the mindful mix, the Science of |
| 0:07.0 | Happiness Podcast. |
| 0:08.0 | For the last 20 years I've dedicated my career to exploring the science of living a happier more meaningful life and I want |
| 0:14.4 | to share that science with you. |
| 0:16.1 | And just one thing, deep calm with Michael Mosley. |
| 0:19.4 | I want to help you tap in to your hidden relaxation response system and open the door to that |
| 0:25.4 | calmer place within. Listen on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:30.3 | I will let you I was there in the king and head. |
| 0:35.0 | The king and head, |
| 0:38.0 | the king and cowlo, |
| 0:41.0 | so that's why they call me. Hello that was Farnie Borach or as she renamed herself Fanny Bryce. |
| 0:54.4 | Fanny was born in New York, the third child of a Hungarian Jewish mother, |
| 0:58.8 | and she first sang that number in the 1921's D'Feld Follies. It's a song about recycling everything from toothpicks to clothes. |
| 1:07.0 | It's no wonder, sings funny that I feel abused. I never get a thing that ain't been used. A song, of course, that would then go on to be successfully |
| 1:16.3 | recycled by Barbara Strissant in Funny Girl. |
| 1:19.6 | He's been married before. |
| 1:22.1 | Everyone knows that I'm just a king there knows. |
| 1:28.0 | Of course, in our present day environmentally conscious world, |
| 1:32.0 | there might be many people more inclined |
| 1:34.2 | to celebrate than bemoan Fanny's dependence upon the recycled and the second hand. |
| 1:40.3 | But as an encyclopedic new book makes clear, this readiness to recycle and repair was rarely motivated |
| 1:46.7 | by any such environmental sensitivity before the late 20th century. What traditionally |
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