Something Understood

Original version

BBC Radio 4 LW

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

BBC Radio 4 FM

Something Understood: Embarrassment

Embracing the Classical

Embarrassment

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, Embarrassment

Embarrassment teaches, amuses and can even kill us. Mark Tully studies its repercussions.

It makes us laugh, helps us learn and sometimes endangers lives. Mark Tully considers the many repercussions of embarrassment, from comic accidents and shyness to health and shame.

Mark Tully examines the extraordinary contradictions of embarrassment.
 
It's an emotion that is an invaluable teaching aid, a source of the purest and funniest entertainment, an experience capable of creating powerful bonds and of causing deep estrangement. It's also a psychological state that frequently kills us – ‘dying of embarrassment’ is all too common. 
 
In a programme devoted to embarrassment in all its many guises, Mark investigates the emotion that makes us blush with readings from Jane Austen, T.S. Eliot and Wendell Berry and music by Puccini, Ella Fitzgerald and the French revue star Mistinguett.
 
The readers are Samantha Bond, Francis Cadder and Matt Addis.
 
Presenter: Mark Tully
 
Producer: Frank Stirling 
A Unique Broadcasting Company production for BBC Radio 4

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