“This is what I think is really surprising to most people: you don’t actually own your body, in the sense that tissue taken from it and used afterwards is yours to use as you see fit.
“The law traditionally took the view that tissue, once it had left the body, was what was called ‘no one’s thing’.
“And it took that view because traditionally the tissue wasn’t of any value. It is modern biotechnology that has given it this value.”
We talked about the global commodification of the human body, from the sale of eggs and the “grave-robbing” of bones to gene-patenting.
Donna’s approach is not to sensationalize these issues, shocking though they often are, but to look at the big questions we as a society need to face in their ethical, legal and scientific context.
Philip Hoare’s Leviathan was my favourite non-fiction title of last year, so I am delighted to hear that it has just won this year’s Samuel Johnson prize.
You can hear the interview I did with Philip earlier this year here.
Part two of my interview with Kazuo Ishiguro is now available here.
In it we talk about his Japanese roots; dealing with success at an early age; and the critical reaction to what he regards as his most ambitious, exploratory novel, The Unconsoled, which went from incomprehension or even hostility within the space of a few years to its selection as one of the finest post-war works of fiction.
He also tells me about his theory that most novelists have produced their best work by the time they are in their forties.
And at the end, he divulges what new project he is working on at the moment…
Matthew, who lived for many years in Paris, told me before the interview that it was seeing images of Paris draped in swastikas in wartime which made him want to find out more about the French men and women who resisted the invaders.
With Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley, Podularity.com enters the video age!
I spent a very pleasant afternoon with Roger Crowley this week at his home in Gloucestershire interviewing him about his book on sixteenth-century superpower confrontation, Empires of the Sea. After the audio interview was complete we went into his garden and recorded this short video.
Podularity’s heart will remain with audio, but the odd talking head (so to speak) is going to start appearing from time to time, too.
Last month I recorded an extensive interview with Kazuo Ishiguro, to mark the publication of his first collection of short stories. It also forms part of Faber’s 80th birthday celebrations.
The first part of what we’ve decided to present as a two-part podcast is now available here on Faber’s site and on iTunes.
It focuses on the new book, Nocturnes, while the second part, which I’ve just finished editing, looks back at some of his earlier books including his first,A Pale View of Hills, now available in a new cover as part of the Faber Firsts series.
Part II of the podcast will be available later this month.
Meanwhile there are several interviews from this week to edit - with Sarah Hall, Giles Foden, and PD James. They’ll all be available in the course of the next few weeks.
“Hindsight is a great simplifier, and the Seventies as an era has been simplified more than most.”
Andy Beckett
My interview with Guardian journalist Andy Beckett about When the Lights Went Out, his reassessment of the 1970s (were they really as bad as we remember them?) has recently gone up on the Faber website. You can listen by clicking here.
Andy interviewed many of the major political figures from the decade. There is, for example, an almost tragi-comic encounter with the very elderly Ted Heath. I asked him before the interview whether he’d tried to get an audience with Margaret Thatcher and he pointed out that his previous book had made that a bit of a long shot:
I realize that things have been a little quiet on the Podularity front lately, so I thought I’d reassure you I haven’t hung up my microphone. In fact, I’ve been busy producing podcasts for a wide variety of people:
Meanwhile, Mark Thompson’sThe White War has recently won the 2009 Hessell-Tiltman Prize. The prize is awarded for the best work of history published each year on events before 1945. The book is an account of the Italian Front, a major forgotten conflict of the First World War. You can hear me talk to Mark here.
The series of fortnightly podcasts I am producing for Blackwells has already notched up nine editions. In the latest programme, you can hear one of Britain’s most eminent novelists, Kazuo Ishiguro, talk about his first volume of short stories, Nocturnes, a bittersweet collection that owes its inspiration to Ishiguro’s fascination with music.
In the same programme I also talk to Nick Davies, whose book Flat Earth News, last week won the first Bristol Festival of Ideas Book Prize sponsored by Blackwell. As it happens, I have also been making recordings for the Festival, which will be appearing on their site soon.
All that said, I have been doing some interviews for Podularity: Mary Beard on Pompeii and Christopher Kelly on Atilla the Hun are both awaiting editing, and on Monday I shall be interviewing Michael Moran about Polish life and history.
Until recently, Georgia’s wars were fought against separatist movements of ethnic minorities. In August 2008 it took on the Russian army in a five-day war which has left commentators unclear as to who was the aggressor and who the victim. Indeed, perhaps those concepts are inadequate to capture the tangled nature of enmities and rivalries in the region.
In this podcast which I’ve just produced for Le Monde diplomatique’s April issue, I talk to journalist and political analyst Vicken Cheterian about the nature of the five-day war and its consequences for the Caucasus and beyond.
Click here to listen. Click here to see some very illuminating maps on the LMD site, which help explain the nature of the conflict. And click on the book cover (above) to find out more about Vicken’s recent book on the subject.
“There was a physician called John Fothergill in the late eighteenth century who said that it was amazing that women had been taught to dread this natural phenomenon.”
As Louise Foxcroft’s sometimes shocking history of the menopause shows, Fothergill was very much in the minority.
The medical profession in Fothergill’s day was just beginning to cotton on to the idea that the menopause offered a lucrative new subject for treatment.
Philip Hoare’s Leviathan was my favourite non-fiction title of last year, so I am delighted to hear that it has just won this year’s Samuel Johnson prize.
Part two of my interview with Kazuo Ishiguro is now available 
With Empires of the Sea by Roger Crowley, Podularity.com enters the video age!
Last month I recorded an extensive interview with Kazuo Ishiguro, to mark the publication of his first collection of short stories. It also forms part of 
I realize that things have been a little quiet on the Podularity front lately, so I thought I’d reassure you I haven’t hung up my microphone. In fact, I’ve been busy producing podcasts for a wide variety of people:
