The Reith Lectures (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
The Cost of Happiness: Tony Hsieh (Imperative/Vespucci) | Podcast24
Teamistry: The Untold Story of Concorde (Atlassian) | Apple
i-Dentity: Jungle, Garage and the Birth of Grime | Apple
Ooh, an unmissable Radio 4 Reith Lecture. Amazing. Not last week’s, sadly, though you could use it as a compare and contrast: last week’s on how not to give a Reith Lecture; the previous week’s on how to get it right.
This year the topics are all freedom-based, with a different speaker on each one. Weeks three and four will address freedom from want (author/musician Darren McGarvey) and freedom from fear (foreign policy expert Dr Fiona Hill). Last week we got Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury, on freedom of belief. In the opening lecture, the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie discussed freedom of speech. It’s hers you should try.
But first, let’s consider Williams’s and why it didn’t work. He’s too familiar, for starters. We’ve heard his harmless liberal musings on Thought for the Day for aeons. Second: he doesn’t think clearly enough. Is it right for religious B&B owners to refuse to let a gay couple stay over? “Someone saying, I don’t want to be made to directly perform an action which is against my conviction… I’m not sure that’s the same as being asked to facilitate someone else’s decision.” Third: his soothing RP voice brings on an instant snooze.
So after you’ve woken up, go straight back to the impressive Adichie. Dignified, honest, clear, courageous – you’d give her words due consideration if she were ordering from a takeaway menu. On freedom of speech she was exceptional. She argued for not censoring arguments we don’t like, for the opportunity to counter “bad words” with “more words”. She’s interested to hear ideas she doesn’t agree with so that she can demolish them.
She moved through so many topics, including self-censorship and censorship in writing, whether through readers not liking nasty characters, or conflating them with the author, or publishers running “sensitivity checks” on proposed manuscripts. She recalled, powerfully, the recent attack on Salman Rushdie. “Imagine the brutal, barbaric intimacy of a stranger standing inches from you and forcefully plunging a knife into your face and your neck multiple times,” she said, “because you wrote a book.”
The Q&A session afterwards was enjoyable too, mostly because of Adichie’s ability to move straight to the questioner’s true centre. One man said he liked to test the police definition of hate speech by being “as antagonistic as humanly possible while staying on the right side of the law”. She called his actions “profoundly childish” and wondered why he didn’t spend his time doing something he enjoyed. A woman asked about women’s and trans rights. Adichie replied that it isn’t true that women are inferior, and it isn’t true that trans people don’t exist. Occasionally she can seem a little grand – her solution that we should get someone else to post on social media for us (she has an assistant) is not available to us all – but this was such a brilliant talk, so relevant and courageous, that we can forgive her the occasional diva moment. She is extraordinary, and it is a privilege to hear her speak.
Also, Adichie’s voice is a nice thing to hear: warm, open, engaging. Journalist and presenter Nastaran Tavakoli-Far is another person with a distinctive audio tone. Though she’s a Londoner, she always sounds slightly like she’s conversing in a foreign language. She reminds me – I’m not sure why – of The Daily’s Michael Barbaro. I like it.
Tavakoli-Far’s 2020 podcast, The Orgasm Cult, was a huge success, and she had two new, very different shows out last week. The first, The Cost of Happiness, the story of tech-bro billionaire Tony Hsieh, covers a familiar area of podcast investigation. Hsieh made his money selling shoes online and his reputation through his happy work environment (the first of the table football/beers in fridge/work-hard-play-hard vibers). He then decided to create an entirely new happy valley – sorry: “company village” – in downtown Las Vegas, with workers working, living, relaxing and educating their kids all in the same fun place. Like Bournville in Birmingham, but drinkier. A gripping tale that will no doubt end far away from happiness.
Tavakoli-Far’s other new podcast, Teamistry, goes in-depth on the history of Concorde, and I am very much enjoying it too, not least for her Spock-like descriptions of people: “John can be light-hearted about the most serious stuff, and he always has a look on his face like he’s about to tell a joke.” She’s like a warm robot. But that’s just her way. She gets results.
Another history lesson in i-Dentity, a podcast from i-D magazine about youth trends. One of the few things that Britain does brilliantly is youth culture, and I love any media that takes it seriously – especially nightclubs. People’s lives change in those places and to document the details, discuss them with insight, is a proper job. i-Dentity does it very well.
