meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
Thinking Allowed

Success and Luck - Cosmopolitanism and Private Education

Thinking Allowed

BBC

Science, Society & Culture

4.4997 Ratings

🗓️ 7 December 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Success and Luck: Good Fortune and the Myth of Meritocracy. Laurie Taylor talks to Robert H. Frank, Professor of Economics at Cornell University's Johnson School of Management, about the role luck has to play in life's successes, or failures. Frank argues that chance is much more significant than people give it credit for. Lynsey Hanley, writer and Visiting Fellow at the Research Centre for Literature and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University, joins the discussion. Also, Claire Maxwell, Reader of Sociology of Education at the UCL Institute of Education, University College London, talks about her co-authored paper looking at the attitudes of privately-educated young women towards the idea of cosmopolitanism. Did they feel like global citizens, or were their aspirations confined to the local and the national?

Producer: Natalia Fernandez.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

This is a Thinking Aloud Podcast from the BBC and for more details in our terms of use and much,

0:06.2

much more about thinking aloud. Go to our website at BBC.co.uk.

0:12.4

Hello. Now no doubt we all suffer intermittently from delusions of grandeur, the belief that if we really

0:18.6

bothered we could, oh I don't know, readily become a cnbleau chef or fix the recurrent fault in our desktop computer,

0:26.1

run a medium-paced marathon, and write a half-decent novel.

0:29.6

It's only rarely, though, that such delusions are put to the test and that was much the case with

0:34.6

with the sense of cosmopolitanism that I developed in the sixth form at school

0:38.9

where I not only excelled in French language but also in French geography I was as familiar with the past subjunctive of Etra,

0:46.0

as with the ecological news that

0:48.0

avalance the midi-comence.

0:50.0

So much so, the way of the age of 18 I went to France I expected to be

0:54.3

thoroughly at ease with Parisians I was a cosmopolitan but even now I blush when I

0:59.9

remember my my teenage arrogance my French, despite all my careful preparation of conversational topics, was incomprehensible.

1:08.0

Just three content of your vois, I'm the le liver france-bocoube, my favory, a madam bovary,

1:16.2

par Monsieur Flaubert.

1:18.5

But at least, my Parisian Mallour left me with an abiding interest in cosmopolitanism.

1:23.9

Well, it's something that could be successfully taught.

1:26.9

Well, a new research paper promises to provide some answers.

1:30.0

It's entitled Creating Cosmopolitan Subjects, the Role of Families and Private Schools in England.

1:35.8

Its co-author is Claire Maxwell, who's a reader in the Sociology of Education at University College London.

1:41.4

She's now with me in the studio. Now you and your

1:44.9

co-author Peter Agleton that you interviewed I think nearly a hundred young women

...

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.