Forum des auditeurs passionnés et critiques de France Culture

Professor David Cannadine argues that class and the notion of history as a continuous 'class struggle' have been overplayed by historians and politicians. He dismantles the Marxist view that events from the Civil War to the 2019 election are part of a narrative in which class consciousness is the driving force. (...)

He makes clear that other aspects of people's identity - their religious beliefs, their sense of nationality, their gender and race - cut across a loyalty to class. He also looks at some events in the 19th century - Peterloo and the Chartists - and finds these were generally reformist movements aimed at better and more representative government, rather than pre-revolutionary uprisings to overthrow the bourgeoisie.

Politicians have, nevertheless, found it useful to address the electorate in class terms - from the appeal to the 'fustian coated' workers in the 19th century to the 'just about managing' of the 21st. But authors of the Great British Class Survey point out that today's population, though conscious of inequalities in society, have little appetite for describing themselves in class terms.

David is joined by scholars and commenators including Diane Purkiss, Simon Heffer, Miles Taylor, Helen McCarthy and Mike Savage.

Dan Saladino tells the story of wheat from the domestication of wild grasses in the Neolithic Revolution through to the controversial Green Revolution of the 20th century.

In 1970 the American scientist, Norman Borlaug, was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work developing disease-resistant crops. At the time famine and malnutrition were claiming millions of lives across the world, particularly in South Asia. Dr Borlaug’s work meant countries like India were able to become self-sufficient. Critics said the new grain varieties were too reliant on chemical fertilizers, but it’s thought millions of lives were saved. Rebecca Kesby has been speaking to Professor Ronnie Coffman, student and friend of Norman Borlaug.

Thomas Dixon explores the surprising history of being alone.
In this episode, he discovers some of the most extreme examples of voluntary solitude - anchorites, people who chose to be enclosed as a kind of living sacrifice to God; the hermits who sought isolation in the desert; and an artist who lived as Schrodinger's Cat for 10 days and nights in a light- and sound-proof box.
And yet, even these exceptional feats of isolation were unexpectedly social. (...)

In the past, if people wanted to find any kind of solitude they often had to step outside. For the Romantic poets, solitude in nature was a way of connecting with the self and the imagination. Homes and workplaces could be crowded and the growth of cities meant that, for many, the walk to work itself provided a welcome interlude.
Hobbies offered the chance to find peace - anglers found solace thigh deep in lonely rivers and a growing number of private readers of books could retreat from a busy domestic setting and explore fantasies of isolation like Robinson Crusoe and Frankenstein.(...)

In this final episode, the historian Thomas Dixon explores solitary confinement, loneliness, and what happens when naturally sociable humans are forced into isolation.
Sarah Shourd was held in solitary confinement in Iran and now campaigns against it. In the US, around 80,000 people are held in solitary confinement on any one day. Some of them have been there for decades. It's a startling figure for a shocking practice that many, including Charles Dickens who encountered it on a visit to the United States in 1842, have described as torture.
The keeping of prisoners in extreme isolation began in the late 18th Century as a way to encourage repentance, hence the word "penitentiary". It was devised by reforming Quakers, who believed that all humans were capable of redemption, whatever their crimes, and were keen to see the end of cruel punishments like flogging. It was used in English prisons too including at Reading Gaol where Oscar Wilde was held in isolation for more than a year. (...)

Diary of a Young Naturalist chronicles the turning of 15-year-old Dara McAnulty’s world. Beginning in spring, his diary takes us through a year in his home patch in Northern Ireland.
These vivid and moving diary entries about his connection to wildlife and the way he sees the world are raw in their telling and urgent in their message. Diary of a Young Naturalist portrays Dara’s intense connection to the natural world, and his perspective as a teenager juggling exams and trying to build friendships alongside a life of campaigning.
“I was diagnosed with Asperger’s/autism aged five … By age seven I knew I was very different, I had got used to the isolation, my inability to break through into the world of talking about football or Minecraft was not tolerated. Then came the bullying. Nature became so much more than an escape; it became a life-support system.”

"Le journal intime d'un jeune naturaliste" retrace la transformation du monde de Dara McAnulty, 15 ans. À partir du printemps, son journal nous fait vivre une année dans sa région natale en Irlande du Nord.
Ces entrées vives et émouvantes de son journal sur son lien avec la faune et la flore sauvages et sur la façon dont il voit le monde sont crues dans leur récit et urgentes dans leur message. Le journal d'un jeune naturaliste décrit l'intense lien de Dara avec le monde naturel et son point de vue d'adolescent jonglant avec les examens et essayant de se faire des amis tout en menant une vie d'engagement pour la nature.
"On m'a diagnostiqué un syndrome d'Asperger/autisme à l'âge de cinq ans... A l'âge de sept ans, je savais que j'étais très différent, je m'étais habitué à l'isolement, mon incapacité à percer dans le monde de parler de football ou de Minecraft n'était pas tolérée. Puis vint le harcèlement. La nature est devenue bien plus qu'une fuite, elle est devenue un système de survie".

Traduit avec www.DeepL.com/Translator + amendements

Robbie Robertson, Al Kooper and Greil Marcus reflect on Bob Dylan's song that challenged and changed lives.

With knife crime at an all time high, James Gallagher explores the innovation in trauma science - Code Red - that's saving the lives of bleeding trauma patients.
Eddie was set to become another statistic, another teenager killed by rising levels of knife crime.
But Eddie’s life was saved by the new field of trauma science. It is revolutionising the way people are treated after shootings, traffic accidents or any injury that causes catastrophic bleeding.
The doctors that pioneered the work call it Code Red. Your chances of surviving major bleeding are now higher than ever before.
So what changed? Quite simply trauma medicine has been turned on its head. Before 2007, doctors would have treated Eddie’s catastrophic bleeding by trying to replace the fluid leaking out of his stab wounds. Salty water, called saline, and just one component of our blood – the oxygen carrying red blood cells – would be put back into Eddie’s body - in what's called a massive transfusion.
It seemed like a good idea. Keep the blood pressure up, keep oxygen moving round the body and keep the patient alive. But that’s not what happened - around half of people died on the operating table. The principles were wrong. They were damaging the body’s natural way of stemming blood loss – clotting.
It was around 2003 that the ideas behind the Code Red protocol started to take shape. The poster child of the new field of trauma science was revealing the vital role of clotting. Karim Brohi, Professor of Trauma Sciences at Queen Mary, University of London, discovered that major trauma could disrupt the blood’s ability to clot within minutes of the injury, and patients affected were more likely to die. What's more, saline was diluting the blood and making the bleeding worse.
Over a decade ago, the Royal London Hospital decided to do something radical. It introduced Code Red, also known as damage control resuscitation, and shifted the focus from blood pressure to blood clotting - get blood products into patients to get on top of any abnormalities there first.
Making that happen took a huge culture shift. This is not a normal research environment. There’s no time to ponder, patients are hovering between life and death; and every second counts. But now the innovation has been accepted across the NHS, and recent research reveals a massive drop in the death rate of patients with catastrophic bleeding.

Alors que la criminalité au couteau atteint un niveau record, James Gallagher explore l'innovation en matière de traumatologie - le Code rouge - qui permet de sauver la vie de patients souffrant de traumatismes hémorragiques.
Eddie allait devenir une autre statistique, un autre adolescent tué par la hausse des crimes au couteau.
Mais la vie d'Eddie a été sauvée par le nouveau domaine de la science des traumatismes. Elle révolutionne la façon dont les gens sont traités après des fusillades, des accidents de la route ou toute blessure provoquant une hémorragie massive.
Les médecins qui ont été les pionniers de ce travail l'appellent le Code rouge. Vos chances de survivre à une hémorragie majeure sont maintenant plus élevées que jamais.
Alors qu'est-ce qui a changé ? Tout simplement la médecine des traumatismes a été bouleversée. Avant 2007, les médecins auraient traité l'hémorragie massive d'Eddie en essayant de remplacer le liquide qui s'écoulait de ses plaies. De l'eau salée, dite saline, et un seul composant de notre sang - l'oxygène transportant les globules rouges - auraient été remis dans le corps d'Eddie - dans ce qu'on appelle une transfusion massive.
Cela semblait être une bonne idée. Maintenir la pression sanguine, faire circuler l'oxygène dans le corps et maintenir le patient en vie. Mais ce n'est pas ce qui s'est passé - environ la moitié des gens sont morts sur la table d'opération. Les principes étaient erronés. Ils nuisaient à la façon naturelle dont le corps freine la perte de sang, à savoir la coagulation.
C'est vers 2003 que les idées à l'origine du protocole du Code rouge ont commencé à prendre forme. L'a vedette du nouveau domaine de la science des traumatismes a révélé le rôle vital de la coagulation. Karim Brohi, professeur de sciences des traumatismes à l'université Queen Mary de Londres, a découvert qu'un traumatisme majeur pouvait perturber la capacité du sang à coaguler dans les minutes qui suivent la blessure, et que les patients touchés risquaient davantage de mourir. De plus, la solution saline diluait le sang et aggravait l'hémorragie.
Il y a plus de dix ans, le Royal London Hospital a décidé de faire quelque chose de radical. Il a introduit le code rouge, également connu sous le nom de réanimation pour le contrôle des dommages, et a déplacé l'accent mis sur la pression sanguine vers la coagulation du sang - fournir des produits sanguins aux patients pour qu'ils puissent d'abord surmonter toute anomalie.
Pour y parvenir, il a fallu un énorme changement de culture. Ce n'est pas un environnement de recherche normal. Il n'y a pas de temps à perdre, les patients oscillent entre la vie et la mort, et chaque seconde compte. Mais maintenant, l'innovation a été acceptée dans tout le NHS, et des recherches récentes révèlent une baisse importante du taux de mortalité des patients souffrant d'hémorragies massives.

Traduit avec www.DeepL.com/Translator (version gratuite)

What should the strategy be for getting out of lockdown? As Britain - and the rest of the world - braces itself for an economic crisis set to dwarf 2008, how do we emerge from the coronavirus pandemic saving as many lives as possible now without causing long-lasting damage?
The science writer, Tom Chivers, doesn’t dispute the need for drastic action against Covid-19. He’s deeply concerned. But he's also worried about his children's future, the wide-ranging economic, social and political fallout from this shock, and the question of whether our strategies to deal with the pandemic might be doing more harm than good in the long run.
The decisions being made now by our politicians, our doctors, our scientists and business leaders will affect us all for years to come. Tom meets with leading experts and asks whether the cure is always worth the cost.

The former Supreme Court justice on why lockdown is 'despotic', being a libertarian, not being a politician, what Lord Hutton's inquiry got wrong and what Keith Joseph got right

After surviving a torturous childhood during WW2, Hans Benning finally found true love and happiness through his work repairing the world’s most priceless stringed instruments.

Hans and Nancy Benning met in Germany while studying the art of lutherie-repairing stringed instruments. Their love and work gave Hans the happiness he longed for growing up homeless and malnourished in West Germany during World War 2. Now living in California, they have been making and preserving the world’s most priceless violins for four decades.

Lockdown encourages us to keep local, but for many this has been rewarded with a new take on the close-by, the ordinary, in the natural world (even as nature is wreaking havoc) - such as the humble blackthorn.
New Generation Thinker Dr Lisa Mullen is fascinated by the beauty, cruelty and danger inherent in the blackthorn - flowers, spikes and fruit – the sloes whose alien green flesh dries the mouth, but combines with gin to make the perfect winter drink.

Not a ‘charismatic mega – fauna’, like the Giant Redwood, blackthorns dense, strong, dark wood, rippling with veins of toffee, plays an important role in holding our countryside together; dividing fields, feeding us and delighting in being one of the first to blossom in spring.

“A dense thicket, bristling with spines - you realise why blackthorn was used defensively as a dead hedge by the Saxon’s, the true precursor of barbed wire.” Roger Deakin

Blackthorn’s physical characteristics make it a popular baddie - folk lore depicts it as dangerous as well as useful. Robert McFarlane - a passionate advocate for nature – even describes the blackthorn as “the widow maker” - for its easily infected wounds.

Reliving childhood adventures in the Chiltern’s, pretending to be the princess in the thorny bush, Lisa recalls dangerous, warning stabs from the blackthorns cruel spikes. She talks to Samuel Robinson, coppicer and woodsman, who knows the blackthorn better than most. For Lisa he sings a beautiful song about the blackthorn winter, the false spring, his dog’s violent encounter with a deer, and his own confrontation with death.

Producer: Sara Jane Hall
Music by Samuel Robinson - ‘Blackthorn’ - featuring Hannah Flynn
https://samrobinson.bandcamp.com/
And “Walking on Black Meadow” by The Soulless Party