The Working Lunch and Food in History
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 27 June 2018
⏱️ 45 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rana Mitter discusses food in history. James C Scott on the role of grain and coercion in the development of the first settled societies, and how the Victorians changed lunch, with New Generation Thinkers Elsa Richardson and Chris Kissane. Plus, following the death of American philosopher Stanley Cavell last week, Rana discusses his work and legacy with Stephen Mulhall and Alice Crary. New Generation Thinkers is a scheme run by the BBC and the Arts and Humanities Research Council to select ten academics each year who can turn their research into radio.
James C Scott is Stirling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. Elsa Richardson is a lecturer at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow who is researching the 19th-century history of vegetarianism. Chris Kissane is a Visiting Fellow in Economic History at the LSE who has written Food, Religion and Communities in Early Modern Europe.
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. |
| 0:32.0 | Hello, I'm Ron Amitter. |
| 0:33.7 | Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas Discussion Program, which brings together leading |
| 0:38.2 | artists, writers and thinkers in conversation and debate. If you enjoy what you hear, do subscribe. |
| 0:44.4 | Search for the Arts and Ideas podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And while you're there, |
| 0:48.9 | please rate and review us. It'll help other people find us. This is the BBC. |
| 0:59.3 | Hello. Today we ask, in early modern Europe, who ate all the pies? |
| 1:01.8 | The answer? Satan, of course. |
| 1:05.8 | Yes, on free thinking today, we're diabolically hungry for knowledge. |
| 1:10.6 | We'll eat cheese in the name of religious freedom, have lunch at our desks in the name of progress, |
| 1:16.1 | and find out why the legendary political scientist James C. Scott thinks that when we've come to foodstuffs and civilisations, we've got everything about the past 10,000 years exactly wrong. |
| 1:23.2 | But first, Stanley Cavell is dead. Covell was a philosopher, of whom one of his great professional peers, Richard Rorty, once said, |
| 1:32.3 | Covell is amongst professors of philosophy the least defended, the gutsyest, the most vulnerable. |
| 1:39.0 | He sticks his neck out farther than any of the rest of us. |
| 1:42.7 | Covell's first book, published in 1969, was called Must We Mean What We Say? |
| 1:48.1 | And it marked the beginning of a lifelong engagement with what's sometimes called |
| 1:52.0 | ordinary language philosophy, engaging with figures such as Wittgenstein, Heidegger, |
| 1:57.4 | and J.L. Austin. But if that sounds a bit forbidding, then we should note that one of his |
| 2:01.9 | best-known books, Pursuits of Happiness, analyzes great scruble comedies, including his Girl Friday, |
| 2:08.5 | and bringing up baby. He once asked, since everyone's interested in film, why don't philosophers |
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