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BBC Radio 3 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Third Programme.

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The Essay Podcast

The Essay

Discussion & Talk

Factual: Arts, Culture & the Media

Essays from leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond.

Leading writers on arts, history, philosophy, science, religion and beyond, themed across a week - insight, opinion and intellectual surprise.

The Essay: Bliss Was It in That Dawn

The Essay: Bliss Was It in That Dawn: Episode 4

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Factual: History

Bliss Was It in That Dawn

Episode 4

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The books and films that inspired a generation of American rebels of the late 1960s.

Michael Goldfarb discusses the books and films that helped turn the post-World War II generation of American children into the rebels of the late 1960s.

As people get deep into middle age it's normal to look back at your childhood through a golden haze of nostalgia. But what if things really were better in the past? What if, by chance, you were born and grew up in a time and place of unprecedented economic growth and stability?

In this series of five talks for The Essay, Michael Goldfarb, born in the middle of the American Century, looks back at growing up in a US where things really were better: economically and socially. As the US struggles with growing inequality and political gridlock, Goldfarb remembers being born in the afterglow of World War 2, and how the "children of victory" were certain that the future would always be bright.

In this programme, Michael looks at the books and films that turned the children of victory born after the Second World War into the rebels of 1968.

Live music and the arts: broadcasts more live music than any other radio network. Classical music is its core. Genres include world and new music, jazz, speech and drama.

Michael Goldfarb recalls growing up in America in the 1950s and 60s

Michael Goldfarb recalls growing up in America in the 1950s and 60s. He describes an era of unprecedented economic growth and stability, and the apparent certainty that the future would be bright

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Episode 4

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