Something Understood

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BBC Radio 4 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced BBC Home Service.

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Religion & Ethics

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life

Ethical and religious discussion that examines some of the larger questions of life, taking a spiritual theme and exploring it through music, prose and poetry

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Something Understood: Familiarity Breeds Content

Familiarity Breeds Content

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, Familiarity Breeds Content

Mark Tully challenges the premise that familiarity breeds contempt.

Recent research says that the familiar becomes more important to us in troubled times, Mark Tully asks if familiarity can make us more content.

Familiarity plays an important part in life. Familiar people, familiar places, familiar objects can provide us with security, strength and comfort. Why is it then that the most common phrase that we associate with the word familiarity is that it breeds contempt? Mark Tully asks whether it is actually more likely to be a source of happiness and investigates the paradox that causes this common source of contentment to be so frequently overlooked.  With music by Lyle Lovett and Sir Henry Wood and with readings from Katherine Mansfield and U. A. Fanthorpe, he celebrates the pleasures of the familiar.

The readers are Philip Franks and Grainne Keenan.


Produced by Frank Stirling
A Unique Production for BBC Radio 4.


Intelligent speech, the most insightful journalism, the wittiest comedy, the most fascinating features and the most compelling drama and readings anywhere in UK radio.

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Something Understood

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