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Embarrassment

It makes us laugh, helps us learn and sometimes endangers lives. Mark Tully considers the many repercussions of embarrassment, from comic accidents and shyness to health and shame.

Mark Tully examines the extraordinary contradictions of embarrassment.

It's an emotion that is an invaluable teaching aid, a source of the purest and funniest entertainment, an experience capable of creating powerful bonds and of causing deep estrangement. It's also a psychological state that frequently kills us 鈥 鈥榙ying of embarrassment鈥 is all too common.

In a programme devoted to embarrassment in all its many guises, Mark investigates the emotion that makes us blush with readings from Jane Austen, T.S. Eliot and Wendell Berry and music by Puccini, Ella Fitzgerald and the French revue star Mistinguett.

The readers are Samantha Bond, Francis Cadder and Matt Addis.

Presenter: Mark Tully

Producer: Frank Stirling
A Unique Broadcasting Company production for 大象传媒 Radio 4

28 minutes

Last on

Sun 2 Feb 2020 06:05

Music Played

  • Giacomo Puccini

    Floria Tosca

    • Puccini: Tosca.
    • EMI.
  • Mistinguett

    Il m鈥檃 Vu Nue

    • La Vedette du Music Hall.
    • Back Round Records.
  • The Platters

    Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

    • Crying In The Rain.
    • Not Now.
  • Sergey Rachmaninov

    Suite No. 2 for Two Pianos, IV. Tarantella

    • Music For Two Pianos.
    • Decca.
  • Jean鈥怋aptiste Lully

    Te Deum, I Symphonie

    • Te Deum; Dies irae.
    • Erato Disques.
  • Ella Fitzgerald

    Mack The Knife

    • Live in Berlin.
    • Verve.

Readings

Title: All Things Wise and Wonderful

Author: James Herriot

Published by Macmillan

Title: Pride and Prejudice

Author: Jane Austin

Published by Wordsworth Classics

Title: The Love Song of Alfred J Prufrock

Author: T.S. Eliot

Published by Bloodaxe

Title: Sharing Eve鈥檚 Apple

Author: John Keats

Published by Wordsworth Editions Limited

Title: Dying of Embarrassment

Author: Grace Williams

Published by medicineunboxed.org听

Understanding medicine through the arts and humanities


Title: An Embarrassment

Author: Wendell Berry

Published by Counterpoint

Broadcasts

  • Sun 1 Nov 2015 06:05
  • Sun 1 Nov 2015 23:30
  • Sun 2 Feb 2020 06:05