The Great Lives programme, now in it’s 26th series, is a half hour biography show that explores the lives of “the greatest people who ever lived.” Host Matthew Parris interviews an eminent guest who argues for the magnetism of his or her historical hero.
And guess who is was profiled just the other day?
Philip K. Dick!!
Here’s the official description:
Actor Michael Sheen (Frost/Nixon; The Queen; Midnight In Paris) champions the life of Philip K. Dick and explains why he had such a big influence on his recent production of Hamlet.
Michael first discovered Philip K. Dick through the film Blade Runner, and moved onto his short stories which got him thinking about science-fiction in a new way. Whilst reading about philosophy, quantum physics, and comparative mythology, it struck him how Dick was intuitively weaving narratives around all the most interesting elements that these fields were throwing up.
He talks about Philip K. Dick’s innate interest in multiples realities, and how they overlap with Sheen’s own family experiences of mental health issues. In fact the more he found out about him, the more he was drawn to this enigmatic writer.
The description fails to mention that SF scholar Roger Luckhurst is also in on the conversation. |MP3|
Podcast feed: http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4/greatlives/rss.xml
Producer: Toby Field.
[Thanks Dave!]
Posted by Jesse Willis
