The Handshake - Social Interaction
Thinking Allowed
BBC
4.4 • 997 Ratings
🗓️ 9 June 2021
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The handshake & social interaction. Laurie Taylor explores the history and meaning of a commonplace ritual which has played a role in everything from meetings with uncontacted tribes to political assassinations. He's joined by the paleoanthropologist, Ella Al-Shamahi, who asks what this everyday, friendly gesture can tell us about the enduring power of human contact. They're joined by Steven Shapin, Franklin L. Ford Research Professor of the History of Science at Harvard University, & author of a recent article which considers the way in which social distancing and self isolating have put us 'out of touch' with each other. As he says, COVID is a social disease, a pathological experiment on the nature of our social relations. Will it irrevocably change the way we interact with other human beings? Thinking Allowed is produced in partnership with the Open University.
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 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:36.0 | This is a Thinking Loud Podcasts from the BBC and for more details and much, much more about |
| 0:42.2 | thinking aloud, go to our website at BBC.co.uk. |
| 0:47.0 | Okay. Hello. Hello, one of my professorial tasks on degree days was to stand in the wings of the |
| 0:59.9 | stage as the next file of graduating students got themselves ready to |
| 1:05.1 | process forward and receive their certificates from the Vice Chancellor. |
| 1:09.1 | Well my whispered instruction to the Graduans was brief and to the point. Walk briskly to the |
| 1:14.7 | center of the stage, bow slightly, accept your degree with the right hand, and walk quickly off. |
| 1:20.8 | Do not attempt to shake hands with the Vice Chancellor. |
| 1:25.0 | Well, it was a tedious task. |
| 1:27.0 | And I had occasionally passed the time by entertaining the sadistic fantasy |
| 1:31.0 | that a student might disobey my no handshake instruction and grasp the Vice Chancellor's |
| 1:36.3 | hand with all the force of the ban in Alan Bleasdale's 1982 television drama, Boys from the black stuff. The man known simply as Shake Hands |
| 1:46.8 | who provoked fear and terror in the Green Man pub by pumping hands so vigorously |
| 1:52.4 | that his victims were forced groaning to the ground. |
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