BBC4 In Our Time: The Egyptian Book of the Dead

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the text and context of The Book of the Dead, also known as the Book of Coming Forth by Day, the ancient Egyptian collections of spells which were intended to help the recently deceased navigate the underworld. They flourished under the New Kingdom from C16th BC until the end of the Ptolemaic era in C1st BC, and drew on much earlier traditions from the walls of pyramids and on coffin cases. Almost 200 spells survive, though no one collection contains all of them, and one of the best known surrounds the weighing of the heart, the gods' final judgement of the deceased's life.

With

John Taylor Curator at the Department of Ancient Egypt and Sudan at the British Museum

Kate Spence Senior Lecturer in Egyptian Archaeology at Cambridge University and Fellow of Emmanuel College and

Richard Parkinson Professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford and Fellow of the Queen's College

listen to the podcast

BBC4 In Our Time: Rosa Luxemburg

Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of Rosa Luxemburg (1871-1919), 'Red Rosa', who was born in Poland under the Russian Empire and became one of the leading revolutionaries in an age of revolution. She was jailed for agitation and for her campaign against the Great War which, she argued, pitted workers against each other for the sake of capitalism. With Karl Liebknecht and other radicals, she founded the Spartacus League in the hope of ending the war through revolution. She founded the German Communist Party with Liebknecht; with the violence that followed the German Revolution of 1918, her opponents condemned her as Bloody Rosa. She and Liebknecht were seen as ringleaders in the Spartacus Revolt of 1919 and, on 15th January 1919, the Freikorps militia arrested and murdered them. While Luxemburg has faced opposition for her actions and ideas from many quarters, she went on to become an iconic figure in East Germany under the Cold War and a focal point for opposition to the Soviet-backed leadership.

With

Jacqueline Rose Co-Director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London

Mark Jones Irish Research Council fellow at the Centre for War Studies, University College Dublin

and Nadine Rossol Senior lecturer in Modern European History at the University of Essex

listen to the podcast 

The School of Life: Good Enough Is Good Enough

TED Talk: Changing the Way We Think About Consensual Non-monogamy | Nirel Marofsky

In this talk, Nirel highlights a number of convincing reasons why polyamory should be a more widely considered option - this includes its emphasis on transparent communication, compersion, diffusion of economic (and other) responsibilities, and importance of autonomy. From this, NIrel will argue that we need to change our definition of 'relationship' to include polyamory and other forms of consensual non-monogamy.

Nirel Marofsky is a student at the University of British Columbia, in the Cognitive Systems program.

Vox: Why Philadelphia has thousands of murals

If you visit Philadelphia, in addition to seeing the Liberty Bell, you’ll spot one of the thousands of murals in the city. That leads to a natural question: Why does Philly have so many murals?

The city’s unique public art program is the answer, as the above video shows. Mural Arts Philadelphia is a unique organization that mobilizes public and private funds to drive a very tenacious group of artists and administrators to cover the city in murals. Started in the 1980s as an anti-graffiti initiative, it’s since become a public art dynamo that serves as a model for cities around the world.

But the structure of the group is only part of the reason Philadelphia has all those murals — their benefits provide another answer. The wall art is a formidable tool in the fight against urban blight, and it also draws tourists to different parts of the city. Murals can also transform the lives of people who paint them: Mural Arts Philadelphia has programs for schools, prisons, ex-convicts, and people recovering from substance abuse issues, all of which have been shown to improve outcomes.

All those social goods complement the aesthetic benefit. Philadelphia has figured out how to transform chipped brick and concrete into a canvas. That can transform a city, too, one wall at a time.

watch the clip