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The Forum: Night

Night

11/08/2012

BBC Radio 4 - The Forum, Night

Bridget Kendall and her three guests enter the night.

Bridget Kendall hears three different takes on our relationship with the night from a neuroscientist, a photographer, and a social historian.

Three specialists in the dark hours take Bridget Kendall on a trip through the night.

First, the Oxford Professor of Circadian Rhythms, Russell Foster, who thinks that our biological clock, which measures the 24-hour cycle, is embedded in our genes, making night shift work particularly challenging. 

The German photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg refuses to keep regular hours and takes most of her photos at night, using a long exposure to find colour in the dark. 

And giving some context, the historian Craig Koslovsky, from the University of Illinois, traces how the people of early modern Europe first took over the night by illuminating the streets and their buildings, enabling them to eat, drink, work and socialise in very different ways.

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