大象传媒

Aditya Chakrabortty investigates five words that made the modern world.

These are the strange, sometimes amusing but true tales by which the reigning ideas of our time came to be the words you hear on the Today programme, on other news programmes and late-night current affairs discussions. What do words like 'narrative' and 'transparency', bandied around by politicians and experts, actually mean?

In this series, find out where these terms came from, how have they changed and how are they shaping our world in this unexpected journey from a simple word to an expose of modern life.

Today - how did 'transparency' become part of our everyday language, and whatever happened to Bagehot's dictum not to let daylight in on magic? On hand with the history and analysis are Christopher Hood, Visiting Professor at the Blavatnik School of Government; Paul Hilder, co-founder of openDemocracy and Crowdpac; sociologist Dr Leopold Ringel from the University of Bielefeld; and Clifford Soffield from the Oxford English Dictionary.

Produced by Eve Streeter
A Greenpoint production for 大象传媒 Radio 4.