PODULARITY

Podularity has been off air for the last month while I’ve been finishing a book (and so busy, in fact, that Podularity’s first birthday went unrecorded). But as of 4.15pm yesterday the book has gone, so normal service will shortly be resumed.
Coming up before the end of the year are podcasts on Russia’s national poet, […]

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 Julian Baggini: The Duck that Won the Lottery [12:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“In marketing and in politics people have got more sophisticated in their manipulation techniques, so more than ever we need to know what they are, so that we can spot the truth when we see it.”
Julian Baggini is the first guest to pay a return visit to the Podularity studio. I last interviewed him back […]

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The third podcast I’ve recorded for Le Monde diplomatique has just gone up on their site. In it I interview Johann Rossouw, editor of the publication’s Afrikaans edition, about the recent violent events in his country. He talks about what sparked those events, but looks behind the proximate causes to the deeper roots in the […]

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 Mark Lynas: Six Degrees [24:18m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“The chemistry of this is more than a century old… The basic physics of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases has been known for a very long time. In fact some back-of-the-envelope calculations were made then which more or less stand the test of time a century later.”
A few weeks back I met Mark Lynas […]

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I recently interviewed Stephen Armstrong for Faber about his new book, War plc. You can hear the interview by clicking here .
The book takes the reader into the world of the private security companies, which have mushroomed in the last few years to the extent that the military effort in Afghanistan and Iraq would be […]

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In May I made a number of recordings for this year’s Bristol Festival of Ideas, a series of very popular events which brought some high-powered thinkers to the city to stimulate discussion on subjects as diverse as the legacy of ‘68 to why the human brain is not quite ‘fit for purpose’.
I’m editing my interviews […]

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 Mary Beard: The Roman Triumph [33:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“I’m interested in saying, look, how can you challenge the Asterix-and-the-Romans kind of image that we tend to have of Rome?
“We are determined to turn a blind eye to Roman subtlety, humour and sophistication because the Romans do a very good job for us of being bridge-builders and thugs.
“The Greeks are sophisticated guys […]

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“It’s a very surreal place… children have grown up with bomb scrap around them. So when they see bomb scrap, they don’t perceive any danger. It’s all around you.The houses are made of bombs. It’s piled up by the side of the roads. It’s part of the fabric of life.”
I’ve just completed a […]

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“In politics there’s a constant endeavour to expose hypocrisy. Because people don’t like hypocrisy, it’s a very useful weapon to attack an opponent.
But the exposure of hypocrisy - the anti-hypocritical movement - doesn’t drive hypocrisy out of politics. It doesn’t even diminish the amount of hypocrisy that there is. If anything it […]

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 Frolova-Walker: Russia Music and Nation [24:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

“In Russian music you have a very different portrayal of Russia [from the one you find in literature], which has very strong rhythms, very festive images. It’s very bright, very colourful, very, very different from the melancholy Russian soul.”
Writing of Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar after its premiere in 1836, one Russian […]

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