2000

S1.E1 ∙ Wole Soyinka - Vaders Rozen

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

The African Nobel Prize winner for literature 1986 reflects on beauty and consolation during the civil war and his imprisonment during the military coup in Nigeria (1966) in which he was politically active. Soyinka tells the story of the singing by the prisoners on an execution day.

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S1.E2 ∙ Roger Scruton - De thuiskomst

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Nature, tradition and religion are Scruton's main subjects in his philosophical view on life. Reflecting, at his farm in Wiltshire, on the beauty of an English tradition as foxhunting on the countryside, which brings people closer to nature and the necessity of religion in order to be able to experience consolation.

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S1.E3 ∙ Jane Goodall - Alleen op de berg

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Goodall talks about nature, the rain forest as solace, love, the death of her husband, mysticism, reconciliation, ecstasy, peacefulness, chimpanzees, telepathy, beauty, spiritual evolution, God, hope, awareness of death, humor and dogs.

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S1.E4 ∙ George Steiner - De code van Pasternak

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with George Steiner, British literary critic and writer (in his home in Cambridge, Great Britain). Steiner talks about beauty, solace, fear, wonder, memory, his photographic memory, the extinction of collective memory and more.

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S1.E5 ∙ Vladimir Ashkenazy - Het einde van de Dertiende

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Vladimir Ashkenazy, Russian pianist and conductor. He sits at a piano and talks about beauty, consolation, love and hope. He has chosen a number of pieces of music as examples of beauty and consolation.

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S1.E6 ∙ Steven Weinberg - Thor, Newton, Einstein

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Steven Weinberg, American theoretical physicist. Weinberg talks about the demythologization of the world and the consolation for this loss that can be found in the beauty of physical theories.

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S1.E7 ∙ Martha Nussbaum

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Nussbaum talks about what philosophy means to her, the attempt at reconciliation with her mother, her childhood, the relationship she had with her father, her mother who became an alcoholic, and the marriage and divorce of her parents.

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S1.E8 ∙ Karel Appel

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Karel Appel, Dutch painter. Appel has specially selected eight of his paintings for the interview as symbols of beauty and comfort.

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S1.E9 ∙ Edward Witten

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Edward Witten, American theoretical physicist. He talks about solving physics riddles, happiness, religion, skepticism, the Big Bang, quantum mechanics, relativity theory, string theory, and the concepts of space and time.

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S1.E10 ∙ Elizabeth Loftus

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Elizabeth Loftus, American psychologist. The interview is preceded by the story of a couple who are in therapy with Loftus. They tell about their daughter who has (wrongly) accused her father of sexual abuse.

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S1.E11 ∙ Rutger Kopland

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Rutger Kopland, Dutch poet. He talks about happiness, his heart problems/infarction, the emotional charge and intensity of memories, melancholy, glorification of childhood, poetry, (death) fear, emotion and fascination.

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S1.E12 ∙ Gary Lynch

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Gary Lynch. Lynch talks about his unhappy childhood, finding meaning in life, how a memory is recorded in the brain, why the brain ages, mortality, the aging process, and the loss of childhood memories.

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S1.E13 ∙ Stephen Jay Gould

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Stephen Jay Gould, American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist. Gould talks about sports, modern heroes and myths, eternity and infinity, beauty, calendars, biological diversity, death, religion and music.

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S1.E14 ∙ Dubravka Ugresic

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Dubravka Ugresic, Croatian writer. Ugresic talks about the role of photos and photo albums in her life, why photos move her, about her memories of photos in her childhood and the influence of a photo of her father.

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S1.E15 ∙ Simon Schama

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Simon Schama, British historian. Schama talks about the beauty of history that he recognized as a child, his Jewish background, the necessity of history.

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S1.E16 ∙ Catherine Bott

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Catherine Bott, British soprano and interpreter of medieval songs and operas. Bott talks about the comforting power of music, her hospitalization as a child, the Beatles, shyness, dialects, speech lessons, happiness.

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S1.E17 ∙ John M. Coetzee

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with John Coetzee, South African writer. Coetzee talks about the complexity and meaning of beauty, aesthetics, marriage, authorship and the solace of writing, South Africa and the cruelty of the Apartheid system.

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S1.E18 ∙ Richard Dufallo

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Richard Dufallo, American conductor, gave a concert. In between the music fragments, Dufallo pays attention to the questions of what beauty lies and where and how man finds consolation, the essence of an artist and the some composers.

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S1.E19 ∙ Leon Ledermann

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Leon Lederman, American experimental physicist. He talks about his passion for his work, Shakespeare, the importance of the disciplines of astrophysics and cosmology within the research into the origin of the universe.

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S1.E20 ∙ Rudi Fuchs

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Rudi Fuchs, art historian. Fuchs shows various postcards that he has collected over the years and talks about the beauty and comfort of postcards.

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S1.E21 ∙ Tatjana Tolstaja

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Tatjana Tolstaja, Russian writer and granddaughter of Leo Tolstoy. Tolstaja talks about her deceased father, why she finds Russia fascinating, her experience that she probably had multiple lives before this life.

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S1.E22 ∙ Freeman Dyson

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Freeman Dyson, British/American theoretical physicist. Dyson talks about gamma-ray bursts, the lack of a scientific understanding of beauty, the complexity of the brain, and whether animals have a sense of beauty.

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S1.E23 ∙ Richard Rorty

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Richard Rorty, American philosopher. Rorty talks about his childhood memories, Plato, his insight that philosophical systems offer neither structure nor beauty, teaching philosophy for a living, and the term postmodernism.

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S1.E24 ∙ Györgi Konrád

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with György Konrád, Hungarian writer. Konrád talks about his interpretation of the concept of beauty, the human desire for eternity and the role that historiography plays in this, the reason why he writes.

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S1.E25 ∙ Germaine Greer

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Germaine Greer, Australian writer, captures her native Australia with a camera for 'Of Beauty and Comfort', for her the only answer to the question of what beauty and comfort mean.

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S1.E26 ∙ Yehudi Menuhin

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Interview with Yehudi Menuhin. Menuhin talks about the moment that represents the now and moves with us through time, composers who give him solace including Ludwig van Beethoven, especially his Ninth Symphony.

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S1.E27 ∙ De Samenkomst

Wed, Dec 31, 1969

Twenty of the portrayed guests come together for an exchange of thoughts in the De Zaaijer gallery on the Keizersgracht in Amsterdam, preceded by a visit to the exhibition 'Of Beauty and Consolation' in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

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