Summary
Walls: A social history of the human made barrier which has divided people into those who should be kept safe and those who should be excluded. From Hadrian’s Wall and the Great Wall of China to the Berlin Wall. Laurie Taylor talks to David Frye, Professor of History at Eastern Connecticut University and Wendy Pullan, Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at the University of Cambridge.
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. |
| 0:36.2 | I'm Laurie Taylor and this is a Thinking Aloud Podcasts for BBC Radio 4. |
| 0:41.0 | You know, for well over 4,000 years much of mankind has lived inside walls. How has |
| 0:47.8 | that affected the way we think, work and create. Find out. |
| 0:53.0 | Hello, you know, some images are so enduring, so persistent that they trample over one's normal |
| 1:00.3 | sensibilities. |
| 1:01.3 | I mean, why is it, for example, that even as I'm reading a particularly evocative |
| 1:05.6 | passage by Charles Dickin, that's, well that description of London in the first chapter |
| 1:10.0 | of Bleak House, for example, fog everywhere, you know the one, that quite suddenly I'm overcome by the knowledge that the very person who wrote those words also sat and watched as a builder erected a wall between himself and his wife? Yes. I mean did Mr Dickens watch Mrs Dickens |
| 1:26.8 | slowly disappear from view? Did he subsequently speak to her through the wall? |
| 1:31.3 | Did he tap out messages and what did he say? I mean we know very |
| 1:34.7 | well that walls have ears, but only a very select few can talk. |
| 1:40.9 | In this same interlude, it does befall that I once snout by name present a wall and such a wall as I would have you think that had in it a crannied hole or chink through which the lovers |
| 1:56.2 | pyramus and thizbee did whisper often very secretly. This loam, this rough cast and this stone doth show that I am that same wall, |
| 2:08.0 | the truth is so. And this, the cranny is, right and sinister, through which the fearful lovers are to whisper. |
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