Summary
Novelist John Lanchester, journalist Tim Marshall and historians David Frye and Kylie Murray join Anne McElvoy to discuss why we build walls rather than bridges and what it says about civilisations past, present and future from Persia to Berlin, the USA to a dystopian vision.
John Lanchester's latest novel is called The Wall. David Frye has written Walls: A History of Civilisation in Blood and Brick is out now Tim Marshall's book Divided: Why We're living in an Age of Walls is out now
Producer Jacqueline Smith
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. |
| 0:33.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. |
| 0:37.0 | Hello, I'm Anne McHellvoy, and this is BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas podcast, bringing together |
| 0:43.0 | leading artists, writers and thinkers in discussions which try to answer a range of questions, |
| 0:48.8 | from should we keep pets to what does it mean to belong, or what can Nietzsche teach us? So stay with us for one of |
| 0:56.8 | those conversations, coming up right after this short message. Why does music move us? How does it |
| 1:03.1 | do it? Well, if these are questions that have been firing you up, I've got the very podcast for you. |
| 1:09.7 | I'm Tom Service from BBC Radio 3 and from Schubert's symphonies to video game music, |
| 1:14.5 | from how to start a piece of music and when to end it. |
| 1:17.8 | From background music to Birdsong, from Beethoven to Beyonce, from Bach to the future. |
| 1:24.4 | Thank you very much indeed. |
| 1:25.6 | The listing service podcast is your guide to how music works, |
| 1:29.9 | and all kinds of music too, the mastery and mechanics behind the magic. |
| 1:35.1 | Just search for the listening service on BBC Sounds |
| 1:38.0 | and learn more about the music we all love. |
| 1:43.4 | Next, a major incident's been declared over the rising number of migrants trying to cross the English Channel in small boats. |
| 1:49.9 | Almost 80 migrants are known to have arrived in the past four days. |
| 1:54.7 | In numbers, they hardly represent the ravening hordes of Goths and Huns who brought down the Romans, |
| 2:02.1 | but a few souls trying to get into Britain across the ICC. Pessimists venture that the three border force cutters |
| 2:08.5 | currently patrolling the channel might one day turn into a whacking land-based great wall. John |
... |
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