60-part 'History of Ideas' R4 from 10 November

[mercia]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2014/r4-history-of-ideas

Melvyn in charge

[vinteuil]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/lat...story-of-ideas

Melvyn in charge

... not Lord Barg* again ! ain't they got ennyone else chez the Home Service??



* "Lord" Melvyn Barg is 175. [ born October 6, 1839]

[french frank]

... not Lord Barg* again ! ain't they got ennyone else chez the Home Service??

Do answer the question, M. Vinteuil. The controller has asked, "And who better to guide us than our very own Melvyn Bragg.”

Ian Skelly?

[ardcarp]

I've no objection to Our Melv chairing the discussions. The powers-that-be are clearly a bit uneasy about the 1215 slot though. You can almost hear their (male) minds clunking, "Hmm, usually You-and-Yours/Doing-the-Ironing/Listen-with-Mother time. I know, we'll make it more accessible by chopping the discussions up into bite-size chunks and fading some mindless boom-de-boom music in and out."

Not quite Melvyn's style, methinks. And as the boom-de-boom bits are (so far, anyway) always the same, might we not all get a bit fed up by episode 60?

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

where is R4? with some 11m listeners it must be somewhere ....

[ardcarp]

...on the radio?

[kernelbogey]

Thanks for flagging this up Mercs: I could have missed it. I had a look at the schedule, and reading 'Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss differing ideas of beauty' I suddenly remembered the Peter Sellers sketch of The Critics, where the guests had all read different books, none of them the prescribed reading which was Harmonium in the Dust.

[kernelbogey]

I've just had my first taste of this series: Professor Barry Smith on the Philosophy of Good Taste… on David Hume’s ideas about cultivating good taste (11 minutes). I found myself irritated by the nervous ticks of the production. Barry Smith had interesting ideas to convey about the links between taste - in the broadest sense, so wine, works of art etc - and the concept of beauty. But this was all chopped up with various aural artefacts: the story Hume quotes from Cervantes about tasting wine is dressed up with Sancho Panza telling the story in Spanish-accented English (What??), the adagio from K467 (original, that) and a soundbite of Kenneth Clark on the study of beauty (but sounding like he'd just stepped out of a garden party at Buckingham Palace). I believe these are what are called 'Production Values': but for me they merely impeded my ability to absorb the interesting ideas. It sounded as though the producer had decided to treat his listeners as though they were all fifteen year olds with the attention span of a fruit fly. (And had been given too big a budget for his own good.)

[aeolium]

An alternative to this bitty and disappointing series is to watch some of the interviews Bryan Magee did with various philosophers in his excellent BBC2 series in the 1970s and 1980s:

http://www.openculture.com/2012/05/bryan_magees_in-depth_uncut_tv_conversations_with_famous_philosophers_1978-87.html

[ardcarp]

I've just had my first taste of this series: Professor Barry Smith on the Philosophy of Good Taste… on David Hume’s ideas about cultivating good taste (11 minutes). I found myself irritated by the nervous ticks of the production. Barry Smith had interesting ideas to convey about the links between taste - in the broadest sense, so wine, works of art etc - and the concept of beauty. But this was all chopped up with various aural artefacts: the story Hume quotes from Cervantes about tasting wine is dressed up with Sancho Panza telling the story in Spanish-accented English (What??), the adagio from K467 (original, that) and a soundbite of Kenneth Clark on the study of beauty (but sounding like he'd just stepped out of a garden party at Buckingham Palace). I believe these are what are called 'Production Values': but for me they merely impeded my ability to absorb the interesting ideas. It sounded as though the producer had decided to treat his listeners as though they were all fifteen year olds with the attention span of a fruit fly. (And had been given too big a budget for his own good.)

Quite agree. But how strange. Was this an episode of The Missing? Despite his being announced as the presenter, there was no hint of Melvyn in today's offering. Maybe the Mozart frightened him off?

[vinteuil]

Despite his being announced as the presenter, there was no hint of Melvyn in today's offering.

... it seems that 'Lord' Barg 'presents' the Monday episode of each week; each week having a different theme - last week Freedom, this week Beauty, next week Morality - but on the other days it is the so-called 'specialists' who present aspects of each theme.

[agingjb]

Great relief to go back to "In Our Time" this morning, without the presentation overlay of "History of Ideas".

[DracoM]

Gosh, yes! Didn't expect what I got in this. I wonder of Bragg knew they were going to chop it up into messes and present it as take-away slop like this when he agreed to do it?

And we've got SIXTY frigging parts of it?

Strewth.

[ardcarp]

Great relief to go back to "In Our Time" this morning, without the presentation overlay of "History of Ideas".

...and to learn that Aesop was a fable!

[ardcarp]

Friday's programme toyed with the aesthetics of music. Rather facile...and ploughing that old Wagner/Nazi furrow again.