Writing and Frankness
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 11 December 2018
⏱️ 67 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Deborah Levy, Adam Phillips and Amia Srinivasan join Matthew Sweet at the British Library for a Royal Society of Literature debate.
Why do we read? Why do we write? What do we reveal when we do? A writer, a psychotherapist and a philosopher discuss what we reveal about ourselves through literature and the difference, if any, between non-fiction, novels and the psychotherapist’s couch. Deborah Levy is a playwright, novelist and poet. In her ‘living autobiography’ The Cost of Living, she considers what it means to live with value, meaning and pleasure. Adam Phillips is a practising psychoanalyst and Visiting Professor in the English department at the University of York. Amia Srinivasan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oxford, and works on topics in epistemology, metaphilosophy, social and political philosophy, and feminism. She is a contributing editor of the London Review of Books.
Producer: Luke Mulhall
Transcript
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| 0:21.2 | it. It's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:33.3 | BBC Sounds, music, radio podcasts. Hello, I'm Matthew Sweet. |
| 0:38.9 | Welcome to BBC Radio 3's Arts and Ideas discussion programme, |
| 0:42.8 | which brings together leading artists, writers and thinkers in conversation and debate. |
| 0:47.9 | If you enjoy what you hear, do subscribe. |
| 0:50.5 | Search for the Arts and Ideas podcast. |
| 0:52.8 | And while you're there, please rate and review us it'll help |
| 0:56.0 | other people find us hello i'm composer michael barclay and i just want to let you know about my |
| 1:02.2 | podcast which i think you might enjoy it's called private passions every week a different guest |
| 1:08.1 | chooses the classical music they're passionate about. |
| 1:11.3 | People like Alan Bennett, Jan Ravens, Grace and Perry. |
| 1:14.5 | And what I love about it is how much people reveal of themselves |
| 1:17.9 | when they're talking about and listening to the music which moves them. |
| 1:22.0 | Just search for private passions in BBC Sounds. |
| 1:26.2 | Download the free app now. |
| 1:34.2 | What does it mean to be frank? |
| 1:37.3 | There's a history of tyranny hiding in the etymology of that word, and the power of an ancient empire. |
| 1:44.1 | A millennium ago, it meant freedom, but not any |
| 1:47.2 | kind of freedom, specifically the privileged freedom of someone who could say what they wanted, |
| 1:52.7 | do what they wanted, without enduring the penalties that others might occur for being so, |
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