Immortality: Pursuing a life beyond the human. Anya Bernstein, Associate Professor of the Social Sciences at Harvard University, talks to Laurie Taylor about the Russian visionaries and utopians who seek to overcome the limitations of our material bodies. Also, Alex Thomas, Lecturer in Media Production at the University of East London, explores the ethical dilemmas relating to transhumanism. Who will benefit from technologies which assist the desire to transcend our mortal state?
11 November 2019
BBC4 Analysis: Can I Change Your Mind?
There’s a widespread belief that there’s no point talking to people you disagree with because they will never change their minds. Everyone is too polarized and attempts to discuss will merely result in greater polarization. But the history of the world is defined by changes of mind –that’s how progress (or even regress) is made: shifts in political, cultural, scientific beliefs and paradigms. So how do we ever change our minds about something? What are the perspectives that foster constructive discussion and what conditions destroy it? Margaret Heffernan talks to international academics at the forefront of research into new forms of democratic discourse, to journalists involved in facilitating national conversations and to members of the public who seized the opportunity to talk to a stranger with opposing political views.
BBC4 In Our Time: The Treaty of Limerick
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1691 peace treaty that ended the Williamite War in Ireland, between supporters of the deposed King James II and the forces of William III and his allies. It followed the battles at Aughrim and the Boyne and sieges at Limerick, and led to the disbanding of the Jacobite army in Ireland, with troops free to follow James to France for his Irish Brigade. The Catholic landed gentry were guaranteed rights on condition of swearing loyalty to William and Mary yet, while some Protestants thought the terms too lenient, it was said the victors broke those terms before the ink was dry.
The Guardian: Survey: Tory poll lead over Labour drops by four points
The Tories still hold a 12-point advantage over Labour but their lead is down four points since last weekend. The Conservatives now stand on 41%, down one point on a week ago, while Labour is up three on 29%.
The Liberal Democrats are down one point on 15%, while the Brexit Party has fallen sharply by three points in a week to 6%, since party leader Nigel Farage announced he would not stand as an MP.[...]
Some 66% of Labour Leavers now plan to vote for Jeremy Corbyn’s party on 12 December, up nine points compared with a week ago. Similarly, 48% of Labour Remainers are planning to vote for the party, sharply up on last week.[...]
Opinium said that there had been some changes among Leave voters that brought their opinion of the two main leaders more in line with their views before the 2017 election. The proportion of people saying they are satisfied with Johnson dropped seven points to 53%. The proportion saying that they prefer Corbyn has risen by two points to 10%, with those saying they don’t know also increasing.
euronews: Police arrest at least 25 after clashes at gay movie premiere in Georgia
A few hundred demonstrators blocked the road outside a cinema in the city centre of the country's capital, Tbilisi, on Friday ahead of the first screening of "And Then We Danced". The film tells the story of two young male Georgian ballet dancers falling in love.
The protesters chanted slogans such as "Long live Georgia" and "Shame" and tried to force their way inside the cinema but where held back by riot police. Some were holding crosses and religious icons.[...]
Tickets for the scheduled three days of screenings at a handful of cinemas in Tbilisi and the port city of Batumi sold out quickly, but the country's influential Orthodox Church denounced the film as an attempt to undermine Christian values and legalise "sin".
CNN: Iran has called Trump's bluff
Iran's latest provocation is further evidence that Trump's policy on Iran is turning into a disaster. That may offer some comfort to Trump's critics, but it should not. Iran's actions, which put it closer to a nuclear bomb, are extremely troubling because they raise the risks of war in the world's most unstable region and boost the incentive for further nuclear proliferation among its Sunni Arab rivals. [...]
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo sounded the alarm on Thursday, saying, "Iran is positioning itself for a rapid nuclear breakout." That was a far cry from his swaggering response last year, when he predicted the sanctions in Iran would force Tehran to change its behavior. When asked what the administration would do if Iranians restarted their nuclear program, he replied, "We're confident that the Iranians will not make that decision." He was wrong. [...]
Instead of achieving the goal of moving Iran's nuclear capability further into the future and persuading the regime to restrain its aggressive behavior against its neighbors, American policy has aggravated all the ills that made Iran a regional threat. Iran is steadily breaking the restrictions imposed by the nuclear deal and showing no restraint in its regional interventionism, another area of concern for the deal's critics.
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