Times of Change
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 3 December 2020
⏱️ 52 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jared Diamond, Camilla Townsend, Tom Holland and Emma Griffin talk to Rana Mitter. What lessons for the pandemic are there in looking back at times of upheaval in history from the rise and fall of the Aztec Empire to the move from rural to urban living in Britain's Industrial Revolution.
Tom Holland's books include Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic; Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind; Persian Fire: The First World Empire and the Battle for the West.
Camilla Townsend is the author of the book Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs, which is one of the books shortlisted for the 2020 Cundill History prize.
Emma Griffin is the author of books including Liberty's Dawn: A People's History of the Industrial Revolution and Bread Winner: An Intimate History of the Victorian Economy. She was chosen as a BBC/AHRC New Generation Thinker in 2012.
Jared Diamond is the author of books including The World until Yesterday, Upheaval: How Nations Cope with Crisis and Change and Natural Experiments of History
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. |
| 0:33.1 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:37.3 | Hello, I'm Ron Amitter, and welcome to the BBC Arts and Ideas podcast. |
| 0:42.3 | I'm here to bring you the end of the world. |
| 0:44.7 | But you'll be in good company. |
| 0:46.2 | You'll be joining Tom Holland, Jared Diamond, |
| 0:48.6 | and Cundill History Prize winner Camilla Townsend, |
| 0:51.4 | as we all work out whether the apocalypse has been rescheduled or not. |
| 0:55.8 | More on that after this word. |
| 0:58.2 | Classical Fix, the show from Radio 3 which opens up the incredible world of classical music |
| 1:03.4 | to people who don't know where to start. |
| 1:06.0 | I'm Jules Buckley and each week I make a playlist for a special guest, a DJ, pop musician, writer, and they give |
| 1:13.3 | me their honest reactions. |
| 1:15.0 | I really loved this piece of music. |
| 1:16.8 | It's really stunning. |
| 1:18.1 | I was so distracted by this horns. |
| 1:20.9 | I just got really annoyed and switched it off. |
| 1:23.9 | Pick one out of the six. |
| 1:25.4 | This is tough. |
| 1:26.4 | Classical Fix, available now on BBC Sounds with a new episode every Monday morning. |
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