Something Understood

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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: Peeling the Dragon Skin

Peeling the Dragon Skin

BBC Radio 4 - Something Understood, Peeling the Dragon Skin

John McCarthy considers the benefits and drawbacks of having a tough hide.

Inspired by a story of a boy who turns into a dragon, John McCarthy considers the relationship between ourselves and our skins. Is skin a prison, a suit of armour – or a bridge?

Eustace Clarence Scrubb is a thoroughly unlikeable boy. He learns his lesson, in CS Lewis's book The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when he is transformed into a dragon.

Inspired by Eustace's story, John McCarthy explores our relationship to our skins and how what's inside us is affected and shaped by what is outside us.

John considers how a tough hide can make us feel safe but can also get in the way, inhibiting our attempts to build meaningful relationships. He questions our assumptions about how physical ugliness might be linked to emotional or mental worth, and meets John Furse, film and television director and writer, who has suffered from a condition called Body Dysmorphic Disorder since youth. This debilitating mental illness causes sufferers to focus obsessively on what they see as horrific defects in their appearance.

As Eustace-the-dragon hankers for transformation, John considers why real change is so hard and frightening for many of us, and how every new beginning is intrinsically bound up with something ending. And as he explores what Lewis's rich and strange tale reveals about human nature. John also finally reveals what happens to Eustace.

The programme includes readings from CS Lewis, Dorothy L Sayers, Janet Malcolm, Roald Dahl and TS Eliot, with music by Benjamin Britten, Simon and Garfunkel and Igor Stravinsky.

Presenter: John McCarthy
Producer: Kate Taylor

A Whistledown production for BBC Radio 4

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