Listen :
Availability:
Available to listen.
Last broadcast on Mon, 24 May 2010, 21:30 on BBC Radio 4 (see all broadcasts).
Synopsis
On Start the Week on Monday the psychologist Dorothy Rowe asks why we lie. Andrew Marr confronts death with the neuroscientist David Eagleman, who has written a series of stories about the afterlife. Ian Buruma reflects on democracy and religion around the world, and viewing it all from the sidelines is Simon Baker, co-curator of an exhibition about voyeurism and photography.
Producer: Katy Hickman.
DAVID EAGLEMAN
The neuroscientist David Eagleman spends his days examining how the brain constructs reality. By night, however, he writes fiction. His book, Sum, is a series of vignettes exploring the afterlife. He talks to Andrew Marr about why both atheists and religious groups have found common ground in his book and why he calls himself a ‘Possibilian’.
Sum: Tales from the Afterlives is published by Canongate.
DOROTHY ROWE
No one likes being lied to, and yet everyone tells lies, both to other people and to themselves. The psychologist Dorothy Rowe describes the different varieties of lie, from the seemingly innocent white lie to the lies we call beliefs. She explains why we need to face up to some hard truths, and how collective lies often prove disastrous.
Why We Lie is published by Fourth Estate.
SIMON BAKER
Since the invention of the camera, photographers have snapped private moments, exposing their subjects to curiosity and desire. A new exhibition at Tate Modern, Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera, explores our longing to view the forbidden and the conflicting feelings associated with this surreptitious looking. Curator Simon Baker discusses how the camera has aided the voyeur in creating images that are compelling yet uncomfortable to view.
Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera opens at Tate Modern in London on 28 May.
IAN BURUMA
How compatible is organised religion with liberal democracy? In Europe, there are fears that Islamic fundamentalism is undermining Western-style democracy, while in the USA the growth of evangelical Christianity seems to blur the separation between church and state that was so important to America’s Founding Fathers. In his new book, Taming the Gods, Ian Buruma assesses the interplay between faith and society in three different continents. A self-confessed agnostic, he argues that the violent passions inspired by religion must be tamed in order for democratic societies to function.
Taming the Gods: Religion and Democracy on Three Continents is published by Princeton University Press.
Broadcasts
-
Mon 24 May 201009:00
-
Mon 24 May 201021:30
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~50~RS~){kind=small}