Monday 09:00-09:45
Rpt: Mon 21:30-22:00
Setting the week's cultural agenda.
06 February 2006
The first ever Secretary of State for International Development, CLARE SHORT , has always been one of the loudest in her party in calling for a new world order and an end to poverty. This week she takes that call to the UN in New York where she is giving a keynote address on 8 February at the Commission for Social Development. This particular meeting of the Commission is devoted to a 10 year review of the First UN Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (1997-2006).
Despite being written over two thousand years ago, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian Wars discusses war, newspeak and class hatred, terrorism, revolution and genocide. So are there universal themes in war and is it inevitable that history will repeat itself? PAUL CARTLEDGE , Professor of Greek History at Cambridge, will be taking part in a debate following a performance of The War That Still Goes On at the Novello Theatre, Aldwych on Sunday 12 February at 5.30pm.
DEMOS are launching a collection of essays exploring the politics of human enhancement and life extension featuring an interview with the Cambridge scientist, DR AUBREY DE GREY , who describes why he believes that the first person to reach 1000 years old may already be alive and why this is something we should strive for. The collection is called Better Humans? and is published by Demos and the Wellcome Trust.
Despite the lack of regulation, alternative medicine flies off the shelves - it's the fastest growing industry in the UK, worth £100 million. But whether it works or not seems to divide us. Physicist KATHY SYKES was a sceptic, until she embarked on a series of programmes on the subject. She explains how her mind was changed and why she's now calling for more regulation. The third part of Kathy's series on Alternative Medicine: The Evidence goes out on BBC 2 tomorrow at 9.00pm.
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