The Word For World Is Forest
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 19 June 2018
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ursula Le Guin's idea of the forest is explored by philosopher and Green party politician Rupert Read and novelist Zen Cho. Plus Matthew Sweet talks to Ian Hislop about this year's winner of the Paul Foot Award for Investigative Journalism, and for Radio 3's 'Into the Forest' we ask whether, if a tree falls in the wood and nobody is around, it makes a sound.
Usula Le Guin (1929 - 2018) published her science fiction novella The Word for World Is Forest in 1972.
In midsummer week, Radio 3 enters one of the most potent sources of the human imagination. 'Into the Forest' explores the enchantment, escape and magical danger of the forest in summer, with slow radio moments featuring the sounds of the forest, allowing time out from today's often frenetic world.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Transcript
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| 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. |
| 0:28.8 | Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.1 | Hello, I'm Matthew Sweet. |
| 0:33.5 | Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas discussion program, which brings together leading artists, writers and thinkers in conversation and debate. |
| 0:42.8 | If you enjoy what you hear, do subscribe. Search for the Arts and Ideas podcast. |
| 0:48.3 | And while you're there, please rate and review us. It'll help other people find us. |
| 0:53.5 | This is the BBC. |
| 0:58.3 | Hello and welcome to Freethinking, and what a world of assumptions that greeting is founded upon. |
| 1:04.4 | You can hear me talking now, but I don't know if I'm being heard, and if you place the device |
| 1:09.4 | producing the sound of my voice in, say, the middle of a forest, how would you know that I hadn being heard, and if you place the device producing the sound of my voice in, |
| 1:11.2 | say, the middle of a forest, how would you know that I hadn't fallen silent? We'll |
| 1:16.0 | uproot this perennial philosophical question tonight and decide if to be is to be perceived. And |
| 1:21.9 | we'll also find our way through the thickets of a classic science fiction novella, Ursula |
| 1:26.5 | Lugwins, the Word for World is Forest. |
| 1:29.5 | Our first item also turns on a series of questions about perception. Did Cambridge Analytica |
| 1:35.4 | take cash to interfere with democracy? Is the Kremlin committing murders on British soil? |
| 1:40.9 | Why did the state decide to perceive long-term British residents as illegal |
| 1:45.8 | immigrants? Why did a Catholic order bury 400 children in unmarked graves? The reporters |
| 1:52.5 | who asked those questions were all nominated for the Paul Foote Award for Investigative |
| 1:57.3 | and Campaining Journalism administered by Private Eye, the magazine where |
| 2:01.8 | Foote spent decades breaking similar stories. Earlier today, I went to meet the private eye editor, |
... |
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