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Radio 3’s flagship arts programme until 2013. Over 350 editions available in the archive.

Radio 3’s flagship arts programme until 2013. Search the extensive archive for interviews, debates and reviews. Go to Free Thinking for the new home of arts and ideas on Radio 3.

Night Waves: Free Thinking 2010

Night Waves: Free Thinking 2010: Comedy or Tragedy

Free Thinking 2010

09/11/2010

Comedy or Tragedy

BBC Radio 3 - Night Waves, Free Thinking 2010, Comedy or Tragedy

A debate on which approach to life and art is more illuminating - comedy or tragedy.

Matthew Sweet chairs a debate on the subject of which approach to life and art is more illuminating - comedy or tragedy. With comedian Natalie Haynes and novelist Julian Gough.

Matthew Sweet presents a public battle between two team of debaters to decide which approach to life and art is more illuminating: comedy or tragedy. 

Representing the tragedians are the comedian and trained classicist Natalie Haynes, and the Professor of English Carol Rutter. They face two passionate advocates of comedy, stand-up Janey Godley, once named 'Scotland's funniest woman' and the comic novelist Julian Gough.

It's an argument older than the Stoics and Epicureans or the Cavaliers and the Roundheads, and it has raged from Athens to Eastenders but still the dispute goes on. Do the British prefer to go through life with a laugh, taking care to never take things too seriously? Or are we to believe those writers who tell us that behind every good comedy lies a vale of tears?

Matthew Sweet chairs the event, recorded in front of an audience at the Sage Gateshead, as part of BBC Radio 3's Free Thinking festival of ideas 2010, whose central theme this year is "The Pursuit of Happiness". 

Producer: Natalie Steed.

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Radio 3's festival of ideas, with interviews, talks, debates, drama and live performance

Radio 3's ideas festival, with interviews, talks, debates, drama and live performance. With contributions from leading thinkers, artists, scientists and writers. The theme is the pursuit of happiness

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