Category Archives: Media

Instant Expert – Penguin Launches New Generation Thinkers Audiobook

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Just over nine years ago, whilst digging a new vegetable path in our Scottish garden and keeping a watchful eye on my 16 month old and 3 year old, I received the news that I’d been selected as a 2013 New Generation Thinker. It was the beginning of a journey that it is no exaggeration to say changed my life. I’d already discovered a love of radio broadcasting thanks to some early work with BBC Radio Scotland for which I’ll always remain grateful. But it was the NGT scheme that led me to BBC Radio 3 and helped me to develop that passion, and learn the skills of a new trade. Interestingly, it was the move to Cambridge not (or at least not directly) the NGT scheme that led me to Radio 4. I was talent scouted by the mother of a prospective student attending my 2014 Open Day lecture, who also happened to be the wonderful Head of Books at Radio 4. She was actually a little disappointed to discover that I’d already made my radio debut and she hadn’t been the one to discover me! There followed many years of joyful, stimulating and exciting radio programme making, from my Radio 4 Open Book Close Reading feature to a series I will always treasure, Literary Pursuits for Radio 3, to my Radio 4 journey to Mars via Arizona! BBC Broadcasting house became one of my favourite places to be, and is still home to some of my favourite people. It was a very hard decision a few years ago to step away from my radio work in order to give more time to my family and release a little of the professional pressure of pursuing an academic career while making radio programmes at the same time.

Having just checked and returned the proofs for my new book, and starting to raise my eyes again to the world afresh after the intense effort to bring it to fruition amongst all the many challenges of the pandemic, I am hit again by the sense of how much I miss broadcasting. So it is with both delight and a little misty-eyed nostalgia that I see Penguin has just launched an audiobook of radio essays by the first 100 New Generation Thinkers. ‘Instant Expert’ gathers together a whole array of brilliant and inspiring journeys of the mind from across the arts, literary studies, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond. My first radio essay features there as Chapter 27, and I remember how much fun it was in the hall at the Free Thinking Festival at Sage Gateshead to dim the lights and take the audience on a tour of science fiction. All aboard the Wombcraft! With the new book coming out in November, the transition to Professor Dillon at the beginning of October, and a major collaborative research project drawing to an official close in December, it feels like a time of change is upon me. I don’t know what the next year or so has in store for me, but I hope that it includes a return to the airwaves, as well as greater happiness and health for us all.

Literary Pursuits Audiobook!

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I was very sad to walk away from my BBC Radio 3 documentary series Literary Pursuits back in June 2019. Although it was the right decision at the time both personally and professionally, I still miss working with my amazing producer Sara Conkey, the creative and collaborative nature of the programme, and the chance to meet such generous interviewees, like Jean Rhys’ editor Diana Athill (now sadly passed away) and William Golding’s daughter Judy Carver, to name just two.

Sara and I both remain very proud of the series and the episodes we made, so it’s great to see that an audiobook collection of some of the highlights of the series, plus the first episode by the new producer-presenter team, is now available.

‘Is Climate Change Actually Being Taken Seriously?’ – University of Cambridge ‘Mind Over Chatter’ Podcast Episode

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In this last episode of the first series of the University of Cambridge’s new podcast – Mind Over Chatter – I joined Richard Staley (Reader in the History and Philosophy of Science department) and Martin Rees (cosmologist, astrophysicist, and Astronomer Royal), to explore how stories relate to climate change. It was fun to do some audio work again after a break from radio for a while. It was also good to have an opportunity to try out some of the ideas from the new book, Storylistening: Narrative Evidence and Public Reasoning, to which we’re currently putting the finishing touches, in particular work in the book on understanding narratives as models.

Richard is one of my collaborators on the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Sawyer Seminar – Histories of AI: A Geneaology of Power – which we’ve been running since Spring 2020, and which has been one of the most phenomenal experience of my professional career. But Richard is also leading another important research project – Making Climate History – so it was good to have an opportunity to talk with him about climate change, rather than AI, although the two are of course intimately connected, as Richard has discussed elsewhere.

This episode was produced by Nick Saffell, James Dolan, and Naomi Clements-Brod.

BBC Radio 3 Free Thinking – Future Thinking

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As we contend with the uncertainty that the pandemic has brought to our lives, BBC Radio 3’s Free Thinking asked me to take part in a programme dedicated to thinking about the future, both under our specific coronavirus conditions, and in general. The programme was one of their first recorded with participants all contributing remotely, huddled in the smallest spaces we have in our homes – although the sound is best if you’re under a duvet, or have at least tried to pad the walls with one, I find that that’s not necessarily always most conducive to clear thinking! But we all tried our best and, despite everything, ended up on a surprisingly hopeful note about what the future might hold…

AI: Fact vs Fiction with Ian McEwan and Murray Shanahan at The Barbican

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downloadI’ve been cutting back on my public work lately in order to focus more on my academic research and writing, but when the Barbican asked if I’d like to host an event on AI: Fact vs Fiction with Ian McEwan and Murray Shanahan I couldn’t say no. I’d just finished McEwan’s new novel, Machines Like Me, and have known and respected Murray for many years now.

The event was part of a range of public activities taking place around the Barbican’s AI: More Than Human exhibition, and part of McEwan’s public events promoting the publication of the new novel. The evening wasn’t focused on the novel and I’ll save my views on it, and on McEwan’s comments on SF in interview about it, for another post. Rather, that evening we were focused on exploring the history of our AI imaginings and their relation to the actual science. The podcast of the discussion is available here.

Final Literary Pursuit for Me: Golding’s Lord of the Flies

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download-1The eighth episode of my documentary series Literary Pursuits aired this weekend on BBC Radio 3 and can be heard again here. It tells the story of how Golding’s Lord of the Flies made it off the reject pile at Faber and Faber into becoming one of the most iconic novels of the twentieth century. It was incredibly special to interview Golding’s daughter Judy Carver, and to see Golding’s journals, which very few people have ever had access to. In fact, all my interviewees were just wonderful for this programme, the story came easily, and it was, as always, a total pleasure to work with my producer Sara Conkey. The story itself, unexpectedly for us, ended up in fact being rather sad. Which made it even more poignant that this was the final episode of Literary Pursuits Sara and I are to make together. Researching, writing and recording these programmes over the past four years has been a joyous experience. I have learnt so much, both about the novels we worked on and their stories, and about how to make compelling radio documentaries whilst staying true to my scholarly values. I have travelled across Britain, and across the channel, and have conducted interviews I will never forget – sitting with Diana Athill as she shared her memories of Jean Rhys and the journey to publication of Wide Sargasso Sea is perhaps the greatest of the many privileges and pleasures that making this series has afforded. Unfortunately, Literary Pursuits has also required a huge amount of time and creative energy, both of which I now wish to devote more exclusively to my academic work, and to my family. It was a hard decision to stand down as writer and presenter, but I hope that people will still listen to the eight episodes we made and take as much pleasure and knowledge from them in the listening as we gained in the making.

 

 

Time Travelling on BBC Radio 3’s Essential Classics

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woman-3303560_1280I have become a time traveller. Not literally, unfortunately, but in name at least, as I join the team of Time Travellers on BBC Radio 3’s Essential Classics. Time Travellers is a fun feature which goes out Monday to Friday at about 10.10am, in which presenters pique listeners’ interest with a quirky slice of cultural history. I’ve told stories about how Dorothy Parker’s ashes ended up at the Baltimore Headquarters of the NAACP, how one of Samuel Beckett’s ghost stories was rejected for being too creepy, and, one of my favourites, how George Bernard Shaw is responsible for Amazon’s Echo being gendered female, even though she doesn’t know why. More stories from me during the course of 2018; in the meantime, go here for some of the best journeys of the Time Travellers team.

Pursuing the Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and My Hyde

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1600px-Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde_poster_edit2My BBC Radio 3 documentary series, Literary Pursuits, continues this Sunday with a rollicking investigation into the story behind the writing of Robert Louis Stevenson’s classic, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. Recording took us from Edinburgh to Oxford and at one point required retracing Stevenson’s childhood footsteps with the help of SatNav! I taught Jekyll and Hyde for many years when at the University of St Andrews, but I have to say that it was only through making this documentary that I fully came to understand all its many layers. People often ask me what the relationship is between my academic work and my broadcasting – the answer is that it’s a symbiotic one. I couldn’t make the radio programmes that I want to make without my academic expertise, but the influence, effect and benefit is never just in that direction. I always learn so much from my radio work, both in terms of new knowledge acquired, but also in terms of that for some reason “dreaded” thing, transferable skills. Radio is through and through both a collaborative and creative endeavour, and my communication, team work, and written skills are so much stronger for it. They’re all skills that us academics could do with strengthening every so often!

Talking AI Narratives with the Today Programme

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The AI Narratives project at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence is one of the most exciting research projects I’ve ever been involved in, combining traditional individual scholarly research (we are all writing monographs connected in some way or other with the project), collaborative outputs (two edited collections and a journal special issue are currently in preparation) as well as significant and genuinely impactful outfacing work, facilitated by our collaboration with the Royal Society. The project website will be updated in the Spring so that we can share information about all the things we are doing more easily, but in the meantime we’re carrying on with our academic research and public engagement in earnest. I marked the end of 2017 with a brief appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme (available here @ 1.53.13) in which I was at pains to counter media sensationalism with a message about the importance of analysing and diversifying popular narratives about AI if the technology is to provide a future we all want, rather than the one some of us fear.

John Berger: Ways of Listening, BBC Radio 3

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Berger

I’ve just spent a very happy couple of days in Bristol scripting and recording BBC Radio 3’s John Berger: Ways of Listening, a three hour celebration of his life and work to be broadcast on Radio 3 on Sunday 23rd July from 8.30pm. It’s a symphony of delights including conversation with those who knew him well, a broadcast of the 1997 radio dramatisation of To The Wedding (my favourite of his novels), and selections from his best bits on TV and radio. It’s been a pleasure to immerse myself in his work again (and by goodness, is there a lot of it). If you’ve never encountered him before (my Mum hadn’t!), Ways of Seeing is the place to start – all four episodes of this groundbreaking 1972 series are available on YouTube. A shout out here as well, for the unsung heroes of radio – the producers. Tim Dee is putting all this together, a man of wisdom, skill and infinite patience. Go check out his work too.