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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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Something Understood

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 LW

Something Understood: Truth

Embracing the Classical

28/05/2017

Truth

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, Truth

As the UK election approaches, Mark Tully seeks truth in a post-truth world.

Mark Tully seeks truth in a post-truth world. He considers how to recognise what is true among a cacophony of conjecture, and how fiction, paradoxically, might lead us to truth.

As the UK election approaches, Mark Tully seeks truth in a post-truth world. He considers how to recognise what is true among a cacophony of conjecture and, in the company of author Howard Jacobson, how fiction might lead us to truth. They agree that we live in times when the search for truth is particularly important - but more difficult than ever.

With help from the words of Mahatma Gandhi, Emily Dickinson, Joseph Goebbels and Lewis Carroll, Mark examines just how slippery the concept of truth can be, and how an untruth told often enough, with enough conviction, can become credible.

Or, as that great believer in manufactured truth, Humpty Dumpty, would have it, "when I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean."

Producer: Adam Fowler
A 7digital 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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