Natalie Haynes stands up for the classics

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BBC Radio 4 LW

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics

Comedy: Standup

Natalie Haynes creates stand-up routines about figures from ancient Greece and Rome.

Natalie Haynes takes a fresh look at the ancient world, creating stand-up routines about figures from ancient Greece and Rome.

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Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics: Series 5: Aristotle

Aristotle

Series 5

BBC Radio 4 - Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics, Series 5, Aristotle

Natalie Haynes stands up for Aristotle, with Dr Adam Rutherford and Professor Edith Hall.

Natalie Haynes stands up for Aristotle with Dr Adam Rutherford and Professor Edith Hall. Fun with Nicomachean ethics, an elephant's tongue and bivalves on Lesbos.

Natalie Haynes stands up for Greek philosopher-scientist Aristotle, with Dr Adam Rutherford and Professor Edith Hall.  

This week Natalie explores why it's so easy to fall in love with Aristotle, have fun with his Nicomachean ethics and how we know he had 20:20 vision. It seems he hated being tutor to Alexander the Great, although he did manage to stay alive in the lethal court of Philip of Macedon, where the usual toll of suspicious deaths was fourteen a week. But how much did he really know about elephants' tongues and bivalves on Lesbos? We love a bit of gossip from a couple of thousand years ago.

Natalie is a reformed comedian who is a little bit obsessive about Ancient Greece and Rome. Each week she takes a different figure from the ancient world and tells their story through a mix of stand-up comedy, extremely well-informed analysis, and conversation.  The series is – in part – about how the modern world is more interesting when it's refracted through the prism of the ancient one. Natalie picks out hilarious details and universal truths, as well as finding parallels with modern life, or those parts of life which are still influenced by ancient thought.

Producer...Mary Ward-Lowery

Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics: Series 5

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Natalie Haynes with more stand-up routines about figures from ancient Greece and Rome.

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Series 5

Aristotle

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