Transcripts for BBC Radio Scotland MW BBC Radio Scotland MW 20170827 090000

I'm going to digital radio b.b.c. Reduce going. To 10 o'clock with. Labor has announced a shift in its policy on brags that the party has committed itself to the u.k. Continuing to accept the rules of the Single Market on the Customs Union during the transition period after Britain leaves the e.u. The proposal which would mean accepting freedom of movement beyond $21000.00 has been set out by the shadow branches secretary secure Starmer in an interview with The Observer Labor has been accused of repeatedly locking clarity on the issue when he views is political correspondent with The Press Association Scotland I do think and labor needed to find its position on Bracks it needed to actually clean it up and we did it stands on brick set and perhaps this and this revelation from Cure Starman this morning in The Observer and starts to set a bit of a position there that was needed from the party services n.h.s. Lot of share aren't expected to be back to normal until tomorrow following Friday cyberattack health board last night said 110 the fide the source of the malware and was working to restore a minority of its services still affected a spokesman warned patients that were waiting times maybe longer than usual. Officials in Texas are continuing to assess the damage caused by Harken Harvey which is not being done graded to a tropical storm a woman was killed in floods in Houston on Amman died in the town a Rockport were falling Parky will set fire to homes reporter for The Dallas Morning News James bargain has been surveying the damage in a time of Refugio it saw winds of up to 140 miles per hour and the devastation was really clear when you when you drove by gas stations were completely sort of torn apart downed power lines roofs buildings and apartment blocks complex is that the storm really devastated that area that ember festival is finished tomorrow or the festival festival fringe which who 1st held 70 years ago bring more than 4500000 people to the city every year and a 313000000 puns to the Scottish economy ever questions have been raised by high sustainable the current setup is with figures showing visitor numbers growing by a quarter in the last decade councillor Donald Wilson culture on communities can be near for the city of Edom or says the authority is already making plans or can cope with future growth stalled by a number of the festivals and at this time of year disobey creativity and the reason people keep coming and it is one of these things that once you've experienced it you'll keep coming back is the cost to reinvent itself every year and every year that different themes are different focuses and it's about where you go in the future so that it's sustainable you have to look at how you can sustain the festivals into the future and that's something we are talking about and also will the legacy as we go forward so we have plans about how we can cope with thoughts on the man who's overseeing the creation of the new 1300000000 pine Queen's ferry crossing so this could still be operating in 150 years Mike Glover the project technical director for the last decade has told the b.b.c. Its design would make it very easy to maintain the new 1.7 mile crossing over the River Forth will be to traffic for the 1st time on Wednesday watch news no sport with John Barnes on the money will not play the u.s. Open in New York he's withdrawn jus to his ongoing hip injury. The former champion at Flushing Meadows says the injuries too painful for him to win the tournament however Murray has yet to make a decision on the rest of the year of this is sports a lot of it specialists. Tried obviously resting rehabbing. To try and get myself ready here and you know was was actually pressing Ok the last few days but it is too sore for me to. Attempt to win the tournament and ultimately that's what I was here to try and Floyd Mayweather stopped corner McGregor in the 10th round of the a super fight in Las Vegas to clinch his 50th straight victory the former welterweight champion at a match from a 2 year retirements it's a con I lease mixed martial arts star the deal for Celtic to sign Rivaldo courtsey from the South African club i.x. Keep tone is off after the defender field the medical Meanwhile Aberdeen are 2 points clear of Celtic at the top of the Premiership it won't be Partick Thistle for 3 Well Celtic came from behind to draw 10 with sent Johnston What will be hard to one and it finished 2 or between ko Mark and Hamilton today it deeply host to have been in at lunchtime before Rangers make the journey to Denmark to face Ross County at 3 o'clock live coverage on sports and both lose my cheese and Scotland were relegated to Euro Hockey Division 2 after they were beaten one know by the Czech Republic who also make the drop out of Europe's top tier sport and back to Creek for the weather and for the majority of the country ill be a fine dry day with light winds and occasional bright or sunny spells across the northwest However skies will be cloudy or he occasionally thickening to bring patchy light rain or drizzle which will be most persistent across the Outer Hebrides and temperatures picking 16 degrees in the Northern Isles 78000 for the West on the mainland 19 or 20 degrees in the east of the country b.b.c. Radio Scotland news. Scotland Hello and welcome to Sunday morning with me Sally Magnus and in the next couple of hours we'll be thinking about the power that video games have an influencing our moral thinking and we are a civilized nation aren't we but how much would it take for as not to be in just a few minutes joined me on the wild screeching wreaking cliffs of some of our loneliest places or at least listening to my Edinburgh International Book Festival conversation with writer Adam Nicholson whose appreciation of seabirds is simply spellbinding that softer Corinne Paul worked on rivers run. This. I'm fairly magnificent and I'm delighted to welcome you to today's Edinburgh International Book Festival event the author sitting beside me has written a quite stunning book honestly it's beautiful the sea birds cry the life's and loves of puffins Gannett's and other ocean Voyagers is so many things Story memoir scientific study possible manifesto all shot through with poetry history and a deep love and reverence for seabirds read this book and I guarantee that you will never look at a seagull. In the same way ever again. So I'm delighted to be joined now by the Prize winning nature and history writer Adam Nicholson or to. Adam how to describe the essence of the seabird you wrestle with this in the in the introduction and you call into service some wonderful poets she miss Heaney and human downloads and fact going right back to the Anglo Saxons as if it is only point 3 that can can grasp the essence of the seabird Well I think in a way in a way that's true but it's not entirely true I think that poetry and science are able to meet in the CBOE and I think that that is essentially what this book is about of course the poets have been entranced by seabirds from home or on words and I think that the the essence of that attraction is that they disappear that they're not always part of our world if you go to a Seeburg cliff now all or maybe it's just ending today. You will have this huge concatenation of life but then most sea birds leave for the winter and this extraordinary absence occupies cliffs and so when they return in the spring their wonderful scent kills of poems about the return of the of the birds in spring as the return of life itself they are like. The ambassadors from a winter ocean that's what I think them they are the creatures that return and say here is vitality and this sort of ambiguity about their nature and you use a lot of the cavalry about borders and boundaries and margins these are birds that cross cross the boundary between the matter of fact and the imagined I think you say one that is right in those early Anglo-Saxon poems a marvelous the way for the seafarer and they are. They see seabirds you don't quite know whether they see the seabirds as the ghosts of drowned friends and the ghosts of drunken sailors or are they actual birds and that So the shifting this that ungraspable a t is like the essence of the poetic I think it's it's exactly the book is named after a line Seamus Heaney's what came 1st the soul or the seabirds cry imagined in the dawn cold when he cried and when I read that I go yes that is exactly right that these creatures have always seemed to come from the beginning of the world in a way from the essence of things more maybe than a robin or something done thing around one's life at home precisely because you can't quite get where did your great love and fascination with these birds come from it was it was shan't Chantal's Undoubtedly it was the Shan tiles of this tiny archipelago between Sky and Lewis in the main in the out to have pretty s. And my father when he was a student his granny died and left him 1200 pounds and he spent the 1200 pounds on buying those islands and I told him once that was the best thing you've ever done in this life which is a slightly ambivalent remark. But. He cried when I told him because it was an incredibly beautiful sort of take on the world and he looked after them and I looked after them and they belong to my son Tom and they are one of the great bird stations as people used to say of the North Atlantic about 300000 breed there every summer in one of these huge booming bringing together of life and death and struggle and newness and failure and beauty and violence I mean. Well those of you who knows seabird colonies will know that you are arriving in a different kind of universe there it it's not like walking around Charlotte Square is it. It's got a kind of it's sensual vigor and multiplicity in it and I was walking right home I live in the south of England and beautiful place I was walking around at home with a great friend of mine who's an ornithologist who works in South Africa and Zambia and after a while I expected her to say as people do how lovely This was when she said nothing and so I said well what do you think and she said where is everything where are the buds Where are the animals and in fact we do live most of our lives in a radically diminished world Amanda Minish world and the thing about the Seeburg colony is that that is undiminished that is were life is still pumping in all it's going to vigorous violent ugly beauty it has ugly beauty built into its genes and nothing when I was a child when my dad took me there was more exciting than that feeling Oh I see the world might be like this and is it that the impact of the shots that led then to the exploration that you undertook for this book when you traveled the world to discover that the seabird glory Yes because of course their mobile you want to know where else they are what else they're doing but there was another thing that happened the reason I really wrote this book was that. A few years ago maybe 4 or 5 years ago I started to read about the terrible decline in sea birds and realize that what I had been witnessing as a child and a young man was in a way a state of perfection and that state of perfection was in serious danger. That the state of world. Is really catastrophic and that the figures are very difficult I went counting puffins with the chief puffin count that's what it says on is his business card credibly distinguished professor at Cambridge anyway and so and he and I came up with wildly different figures after the days counting and I So you know what's going on I'm sorry I'm so bad at this and he said no no. If if anybody counts for puffins there are probably either 2 or 8. And so the figures are tricky but given that. The number of seabirds is undoubtedly in steep decline that probably in 1950 there were about one and a half 1000000000 seabirds in the world a 1000000000 of those are now dead 2 thirds of the seabirds have gone in 50 or 60 years for various reasons that maybe we might talk about but that's why I wanted to write this book that something terrible was happening. Weirdly just at the moment when people are coming to understand because of the incredible new miniature technology that can track them that can measure the heartbeat that can know whether they're flying or in the sea whether it's light or day can can no enormous things number of things about their lives and so we're in a peculiarly ironic situation with these creatures we're getting to know them for the 1st time just as we're destroying and we will talk later about their the reasons for the decline and what if anything can be done but you mentioned the tracking technology now so I'd like you to read a little bit about the life of a tract full Mar and how much we gain from being able to follow these birds and yes so this is about a full moan many of you will have seen fullness on a on a on a cliff the way in which they do this incredible circling this kind of smooth disgusting circling by a cave and nobody previously until this new technology has understood what they do and so this is a part of a story of an Orkney film. You know which is a little little island you don't me I know how low is the Mecca and as rock of fullness studies successive generations of the but has since 1950 been experimented with and prodded there by Sun tos from the University of Aberdeen making them one of the most consistently examined populations of wild animals in the world in May 20 1222 the Filmers nesting in the ruins of the abandoned buildings in the old field walls were fitted with g.p.s. Loggers stuck with waterproof tape to their backs on the mantle between the wings. The Revelator e film was a big male number 1568 and a friend of mine so pleased with this story that she's had 1568 tattooed on her arm . And. If your lover. 5068 was well known to the scientists he'd bred online how they were the same partner for the previous 11 years and just solve the midday on the 23rd of May 2012 the Aberdeen sun to grab him where he was sitting on his nest at the southern end of an island his partner was away fishing 1568 already been taking part in the Aberdeen experiments with Ewan Edwards and Paul Thompson they were moved to geo locator that had been attached to his leg 2 years before with a new g.p.s. And a new geo locator that's another kind of tracking device 1568 was settled back on his egg waiting for his partner to return from fishing 3 days later she came back and at 1030 that evening 1568 headed out to sea until recently that's where the information would have stopped nowadays with satellites and miniaturize ation it's where it begins and 14 days later on the usual morning round of the nests to see which birds had returned Paul and Ewan found 1568 back on his nest that's 2 weeks later to their excitement he was still carrying both his tracking devices which they removed before putting him back on the nest and then anxiously downloading the data. That is often the moment when it becomes apparent that the g.p.s. Has stopped working as soon as the bird left the nest but not not to this time. The weather had been coming in late May with a large unstable summer high hanging over the British Isles when the wind blows they go on their travels James Fisher who's the gratefulness scientist in the early part of the 20th century had written rough weather is necessary to the full Mers the trade winds to the human conquest of the new world rough weather is the fullness passport its transport to mid ocean 1568 was true to his jeans and for 2 days he waited for the wind afloat on the ocean just to the north west of Orkney but then the weather changed a deep depression began to build in the Central North Atlantic well to the south of the waiting and as it deep and strong sized easterlies began to blow in that wind he set off to the north west a sustained 11 hour flight to the channel between Shetland and the ferries a rich picking grounds for the plankton drifting up in the North Atlantic Current He stayed there almost a day hungry from his time on the egg 960 and his wife had been away for a night he hadn't eaten a thing now he was grazing happily on the maid as the ocean then came a surprise nobody nobody suspected this this is a bird incubating an egg early in the morning of the 4th day of his journey 1568 set off in the wind on a heading about 250 west southwest and flew fast and hard out into the depths of the North Atlantic for 2 and a half days a 1000 miles in 55 hours he slowed at night but during the day sometimes covered more than 40 straight line miles an hour if you take the zigzag path of his dynamic soaring into account he may have been travelling half as fast again in good time. It is made still sitting on the egg 9 Hi-Lo he arrived at the destination he's undoubtedly been seeking the rich waters around a mountainous unbroken section of the Mid Atlantic Ridge called the Charlie Gibbs fractures a and having arrived there he fared for a couple of days. His very very rich marvelous part of the Atlantic just recently discovered with birds from the Falklands from the Xaus from Newfoundland all that and then flew back to our land to go away Bay up the west coast of Ireland came made a Scottish landfall that scary of all of Taare up the Outer Hebrides back to Cape Ross and to on holiday that's 3900 miles in 13 days that's why we love 50 and 68. And once at once one of the many things that I love about the book is the way that you through talking about the technology you make real some of the people who gather the data the folk who spend hours in stillness watching birds in remote parts of the world you know it was important to you that the work of these people should be recognised Yes I mean this is a purely parasitic book I am a take really. Take take take this far or fungus and that. You know these people see birds sun tis as you may know dedicates years of their lives in the most dreadful conditions basically to counting counting is what was what they do for years and years and years and this book is. You know has just sucked out of their papers their thousands and thousands of papers about the lives of. It's I think it would only be graceless not to make them real you know it's it's I feel enormous gratitude to these people for the work they're doing and I think one of the you know one of the things I take from this whole you know I've spent whatever it is to 2 years or so on this is. How terrible that more of us don't know about that work that some have many of these ideas have been circulating in the scientific community for 101215 years but it hasn't got out to most of us most of us don't really know what marvels the seabirds are and I think that if I have a mission that is my mission to communicate the credible how does 1568 know about the Charlie capes fracture saying how does he know when he's in goal way by a that he's got to head north. How does he know that flying flying out in to land he can take the wind blowing him westwards but that to get back yes to come back further south because the winds are less strong that how do these creatures know these things I think that is a very very deep question which given the damage we're doing to the natural world all of us should ask about everything. How did you choose the birds that you did I don't know 6 or 7 of them yes I think there are 10 there are 10 also in the. Eyes of the birds that are on the Shans are they all the puffins guillemots rates the bills all the birds that I wish were on the Shantz like the albatross this was a share for to us I think about $11000.00 birds species in the world and about $350.00 of them a sea birds and so obviously if you're not going to write an encyclopedia you can't do everything so essentially it's the birds whose stories I loved this is the birds with whom I could fall in love that is essentially what I am and this is a is a book that's full of stories and if we go through just just you know 2 or 3 of the birds with you talked a little bit about the Puffin which I I know something about because I'm very familiar with the Westman Islands south of Iceland and researched actually the history of the of the Puffin for normal I was writing the set there and what struck me was the descriptions of the sky in the past the 17th century black with puffins clouded the sun and when you go there today certainly there are you know there are lots around but it's nothing like that you capture that sense of of sort of desolation around the bar Well I think there is no doubt that it is desolate the great puffin scientist of the West means for Hansen did you meet him you know I haven't met him he I was I was led around by the owners of the hotel best man I know who many how living off in the morning make a living. Well for Huntsman is the gloomiest man I've ever met. Absolutely charming only ever wears black and never raises his head from the ground and he told me how when the Puffin disaster that's happened in southern Iceland because of the change in ocean currents essentially the because the Atlantic wall with global warming the whole of southern Iceland is Bay didn't much warmer water now and in the warmer water the wrong kind of plankton thrive they're much thinner the plankton the that are living in in cold water because cold water plankton need to store fat for a cold winter warm water plankton can stay thin because they can keep feeding all year because the systems are going and because the plankton the thin the sand deals that the profits eat are either thin or absent and so the puffins are desperate for food making literally 8100 mile trips out from their colonies to go and find these sand eels to feed their chicks and essentially not feeding the chicks and described to me with some sort of Gothic relish. The terrible sight he came on once of a colony just west of the West mint in fact where he'd found one some 130000 dead puffin chicks lying on the grass and I said God that sounds terrible and he said yeah you should try Norway. If you want melancholy trying Norway because Norway 20 years ago 25 years ago had 4 and a half 1000000 puffins it barely has a 1000000 puffins it's this is this is catastrophic. What about Gannett tell us about the Gannett it's a wonderful story of a. Poor man who lost his eye to the Gannett But you you. Think you describe it as you know the ending of course they go on to say I'm you know what your novels are like. Right now I read it basically. You say though we have forgotten the wrongness of these animals and t. Forgiveness and understanding of the foundations of the seabirds seabirds world and yes it's undoubtedly a brutal world this story of the Gannett is lovely man the Welshman from Cardiff. Who loved birds and looked after birds all his life and he was down on the sands in the gallon and an insular you know where the tide with draws a long long way but but not entirely so there's a shallow sea that you can walk out on for mile and a half out on the sands and he saw a Gannett sitting there just on the edge of the tide and it's clearly had some blood here and clearly broken something and this lovely man had seen a dead sheep at the top of the beach these are the kind of brutal facts one deals with in any way and he said he thought he could give the Gannett a good meal. So he picked it up and was going to take it and set it down next to the dead sheep everything was fine and he had the Gannett under is arm like this as walking along along the beach and the gannets head bobbing ever on content and then a family came along across the beat we shouldn't rush for it. With a little dog. And the little dog as it came up to them just jumped up to the Gannett that was in his arms like this just to get its tail feathers and he looked down and as he looked down again it reached up and took out his eye. And it's the most I received it in the bush I could. Because it's so easy to think that these are cute or just beautiful you know or you know that Gannet plunge it's such an elegant and astonishing thing and and the sight at the bass which all of you will know it's just one of the great nose storms of life. But looking at Gannett sign you have a look less with a brilliant line in the phone with a with a stare as blank and pitiless as the sun and. I often think you know we always see little toy stuffed puffins Daintree in shops Well I say in the book that you should really think of a profit as an avian Colonel Gadhafi. Amazingly glamorous Hoadley dressed in all the right kit and Apple lets in everything but he'll kill you if you can let's hear another reading another species of seabird razor bill and. The sad fate of the great all Yup there's an awful lot of gloom in this book and I should just tell and this is a particularly. The poet in libretto this Melanie Challenger who's in fact married to one of the great young. Scientists has described how her grandmother keened over the blunted places of her childhood disappearance and the diminishing of treasured things has the same kind of fascination for us as that black tongue of water at the center of a river plunging over a fall it's the place into which all energy flows and vanishes the idea of loss is riveting to the imagination challenger has written like shrapnel lodging in the mind she wrote she revived the extraordinary Anglo-Saxon dust shale one. Meaning the fascination experienced by someone looking to ruin a kind of daydream of dust pondering that which has been lost dust seeing dust chewing dust cheering the daydream of a mind strung between past and present everything in a great bird colony is the day dream of a mind strung between past and present continuity an extinction all but each other their twin stars one light one dark a small change in the mathematics a slight overtipping in favor of the predator and not raise a bill cycle would move from the wonderful toy lion roaring of the fathers and their peeping ticks to absence and silence extinction is an ever present possibility even as their fat swollen life is blazing around you it has also given the history and time length of a species existence a certainty the moment will undoubtedly come when the only rays of bills that survive fossils we will probably not be here to witness it. The death of a razor bill is made more poignant because they're the representatives on earth of the largest seabird ever to lived in the northern hemisphere and its most famous extinction their most magnificent cause and the growing Pango are the Pinguin Assim Pennis the full Cold War the Arpanet as in Basque they get food Lynch a manic languages or since the 18th century when the Welsh naturalist Thomas Paine and Kazan this name the great orc watched the rays of bills and their coming as near to living great or because you ever will when in the 19th century stuff great orcs or their skins were dispatched for sale to the gentleman collectors and museums of Europe and North America a couple of spare bed razor bills were often sent with them in case the great bird needed to repair in plumage in wing form in Bill shape and in egg passing the raise a bill to Pet 2 eights memories of the life of its great cousin like the razor bill the great tendency to shut and shake its had on the nest a constant self adjustment of body and plumage the razor bill has a fine white line on its face a great orc a big bloated white patch in front of the eye plus the powerful Ridge bill all of which suggests that like the rays of bills they use their body in its markings to establish and confirm their pad bones laying a single large egg most years and remaining monogamous for long lives only in size one of the most elastic and adaptable of animal characteristics quick to change over relatively few generations does it differ. But as with the blue whale scientists was what drew the hunters to the great talk it sheer quantity of feathers meat in oil made it their favorite prey so that now the great auk stands for all endings and all remembering the post of it for the species we have lost or destroyed. Where you say it stands for all endings What about all the sea birds we are currently destroying whether it's climate change pollution plastics industrial fishing how much damage are we doing. Well I think as I said there is no doubt that there is a general catastrophe in all the world oceans it is not absolutely universal Some species are doing fine in some places fullness in the North Pacific Fullmer as in the cousin species in the Southern Ocean are doing fine but New York's. The albatrosses the shearwaters The Shaggs and cormorants except for some freshwater land base cormorants the herring gull the black lesser black back gull the great black bag. All of these are in decline and radical decline. It's perfectly possible that by the end of this century they'll be no puffins in Scotland south of Orkney. That will be by the end of the century undoubtedly many local extinctions but only $11.00 encouraging aspect of this is that when the dinosaurs were killed by the the meteor 66000000 years ago the worst several lineages of sea birds gulls cormorants albatrosses which survived that general catastrophe and it was a general catastrophe at 75 percent of all the plankton died in the thing that killed the dinosaurs and so the very fact that sea birds can move can fly does mean that they have some resilience if there is some resilience in them. But what if you talk to the you know the sun tis who we were talking about the people who have dedicated their lives to this. Subject none of that I couldn't find one of them who is up to mystic about the future of seabirds they all think that the likelihood is that most will be gone by the end of the century and this is an extraordinary fact. Somebody worked out a few years ago that. Every year float on the wing off the coast of the British Isles there are $70000.00 tonnes of c But I think I absolutely love. And I was trying to get a measure on it so I rang the clerk of works because he too and I asked him how much does your cathedral way. He said 70000 times so thank you very much. So you need to imagine a soul's brick with each will of reliving seabirds which we are erasing from the face of the earth and without any of us knowing about it. None of us are consciously doing it none of us would consciously choose to do it and yet for all the reasons you've just mentioned we are at and thank you for that I'm I'm going to invite you to ask your questions now or your observations there's a question here thank you. I don't own an item but the words are put away only experiences for you. Living in the city obvious you see them encroaching into the city the seagulls I was wondering Is not Is that what you know in some ways we're tempting them in with our rubbish and our food is not dark what effect is that having on them are they losing their ability to deal with the natural world because we have this invite you know this this element here that's probably throwing their natural instincts completely Well it's very interesting question 9 people who have done very good studies on comparing the same species of girls living out on a night and Islander living in the city in Tasmania and also in France in Britain and the results are fascinating that the urban goals are big and fat. But they are also. Worse at bringing up children lay few eggs and don't live so long so I don't know if those that quality of life for the urban go reminds you of anything. But the girls we see here we've made them. They're like us. Thank you yes I think thank you you ended your talk by talking about intelligence and that the single was one of the birds that survived the cataclysmic dinosaur of ant and I loved the story of the Siegel in the Paris park in your book and I was just wondering if you could talking about intelligence because you made that point about the singlets maybe you could recount that story for people who haven't read it yes the story. In the in the Paris park some old authorities were just cruising round the which garden was it you remember though I Caro is one of those big Paris park which have Those are ugly great poems in it with stone edges and people was feeding the fishes with bread and there was a herring gull that and it was floating about in the palms and waiting while for someone to throw a piece of bread in and so it took the bread and retreated to a little into the middle of the pond away from the from the human beings around the edge and threw it on to the surface of the water so that it disintegrated waited for the fish in the to come up and start namely think I'm just having a little sushi right foot. That's clever is there because it's making a transfer It's understanding that it's not a straight this is food but this is what might get me food and that is certainly the thing that crows and you know that all that very clever coded family can do but it's a rare instance of a seabird being able to do it clever but I mean there's the I would say about that is all those measures of crow intelligence. Are saying these birds are clever because they're to users and they can do things like us you know I think that we need to move and not only have that anthropocentric measure of intelligence I think the food. And the albatross straw didn't really abilities of the Albatross to understand weather systems for example is a form of intelligence so we don't even have any access to and so it is nearly unreadable for us but it is that recognition of multiple intelligences that is a route to to the yeah and there's a lady here that's been waiting thank you you brought back memories I'm not a scientist but back in the fifty's I had to venture a spirit. And manage to get on with the team is going to work on 9. And my job there was to paint the numbers on the nesting site of the. Your one of the people weird mile. And after that I was actually towed to walk along a grassy stretch so they could stand back and the skewers would die for me when I got there. So I'm just wondering if this is ridiculous they still have but they certainly do the main thing to say thank you for the numbers. That's marvelous Well thank you very much for your questions we've only touched on some of the wonders in this book and utterly in crossing read the sea birds cry the lives and loves of puffins gannets another ocean voyages is published by William Collins please join me in showing our great appreciation to Adam Nicholson protect. My fans once again to the wonderful Adam Nicholson and if you missed any of that interview you can listen again via our page on the b.b.c. Radio Scotland website there's more from the Edinburgh International Book Festival next week when you can hear me in conversation with the Icelandic writer thought this over on her thought provoking journey to forgive the man who raped her You're listening to Sunday morning with me Sally Magnusson you'll also find us on Facebook and you can follow us on Twitter using the hash tag at b.b.c. Radio Scott give me great pleasure to unveil the plaque at the open casting bridge for people from the sky to mean all Scotland's bridges have connected many parts of the country if we can ever want to you know. But in the form of leisure and they sweat and state the birth of poor this latest piece of engineering is set to join them a new bridge linking the nation's capital to be insured Kingdom or listen for nuisance Now in recent years there have been signs of a phenomenon that me and muse you'd be me is your to be honest have passed you completely by Ira fact 2 as zombies look around and you'll see them in books films and games and you know hopefully nowhere else but according to my next guest there's more to the current fascination than and to attain Mint Greg Garrett theologian and professor of English at Baylor University Texas argues in his new book that the zombie narrative is a way of grappling with some of the very real threats we perceive in our actual world Good morning Gregg good morning so how are you fine thank you. Greg can we start by clarifying what is on b. Is and in particular the zombie apocalypse that you particularly explore in your book from 1968 on the sort of canonical zombie is created by George Romero and it is an undead creature and this creature can bite you infect you and turn you into a creature like itself and so you you lose your humanity your human agency and you sort of become this ravening creature hungry for human flesh and the zombie apocalypse is a story that evolves out of this this kind of idea that the. The entire species convince it going the way of the dodo because we all get transformed into this and so most of these stories are an attempt by a hero or a small group of people to sort of hold out and continue to exercise their humanity as they try and and fight off the hordes Well this is rich meat for a Sunday morning Greg What made you want to devote so much of your time and effort exploring all this it's a great question there are actually 2 things I wrote a previous book for Oxford on stories of the afterlife and there was a chapter in that book that included information on the undead on vampires zombies and ghosts and it just sort of ballooned all out of proportion to the rest of the book and so my editor and I realized that there is something huge going on here that we needed to spend more time talking about and so this book is in a sense sort of a sequel to that 1st book and then the 2nd thing is I have a teenage son and I would often go in at night and tell him it was time for bed and I would find him killing zombies with friends from around the world and there were all of these different ways that he was consuming this story in movies and in television shows like The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones and in games and apps and as I paid more attention to it I began to realize that this is a story that as you were saying in your intro sort of has exploded out of all proportion to its logic you know we don't imagine there ever will be an actual zombie apocalypse and yet this is become one of the most potent stories in the world and I wanted to understand what it was that people were getting from it and what did you did use well what I discovered in my research is that there are a number of sort of flashpoints in human history where zombie like creatures whether it's corpses or capital d. Death have popped up in our literature and culture and these are these are times when people have felt that you know the species might be in danger let's say so during the Black Death during the middle ages were. In art and poetry from the trenches of World War One and I think this latest manifestation reflects kind of our post 911 post 77 reality where we look around and we are surrounded by all these things that we rightly should be afraid of by you know terrorism and and political unrest and economic unrest and pandemics and so the idea is that these can sort of stand in for us they're in themselves they're a fairly bland kind of personality free monster but we can project our own fears onto them and consume the story and close the book or turn off the television and go to bed and go well at least the dead are not walking so you can see a correlation as you look back between humankind facing what it perceives as a threat to its very existence to a sort of spike in zombies Yes absolutely and so when the 1st some b. Film appears in 1968 some of your listeners will know that this is a particularly horrific year in American history we've got assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy we've got the Vietnam War political unrest changes in sexual and religious and cultural mores it makes sort of perfect sense that this is a kind of defense mechanism for us a narrative defense mechanism as it's been in the Middle Ages in World War One and for people surviving Hiroshima and things like that to sort of face death squarely and say No I've still got my humanity and as we said to be able to kind of put down the book Turn off the t.v. And in at least get a bit of sleep before you get up and start the whole thing over when you talk in your book about the moral dilemmas that play out in this cultural narrative about what it is to have a soul for instance and where we draw the line at harming one another yeah this is I think a particularly good kind of narrative for us to wrestle with because it is the human being sort of in action. And early on in my research for the book I interviewed Angela Kang who is a writer and executive producer on The Walking Dead television show and what she told me was very important in sort of helping me to shape this idea about these stories being ethical narratives she said you know we have zombies on our show but it's not a zombie show it's about the human beings and it's about the choices that they make and what those choices cost them in terms of their humanity and one of the reasons that I think that fits nicely into this idea of zombies as a kind of post 911 phenomenon is that when you live in a world of threat and you are faced with this sort of question about how you react to that do you react out of fear do you react out of you know worry do you try and live in to your best humanity and I think one of the other things that happens in the zombie stories is we are sort of asked to compare ourselves to the zombies which resemble us sort of superficially and maybe in some kind of internal ways as well because you know their primary drive is violence and consumption and a lot of commentators on the zombie story talk about how they sort of just represent humanity and it's very very worst but that's that's something that comes up in many zombie stories as well what is it that makes us different from these these monsters that we oppose I wouldn't want to sort of undermine your academic thesis but. It's not commercialism that's just going on here I mean how many teenagers who are sitting scanning themselves to death in front of a zombie game or a film are are really concerned with the human soul or threats to our existence Of course that actually is one of the things that I've been most interested in the work that I've done on religion and culture over the years is that most of us don't come to stories because we expect to be edified by them you know when when I sat down to watch Game of Thrones last Sunday night or sit down again this Sunday night it's not because I'm thinking to myself well I really have some some issues that I . Need to work out and so in any kind of form of pop culture or material culture we we consume it not so much because we're coming to it for answers consciously but because it's it's an entertainment for us but what people have discovered and what is sort of at the core of what I do in kind of drawing attention to the themes and ideas in pop culture is that there are central things about our humanity that are being wrestled with in stories and so whether you're watching a romantic comedy or a zombie film there is some kind of existential question or questions that are being answered even if you don't stop and consider it and you don't think that you know for want of a better word theological insights that you deriving from zombies will make some people feel uncomfortable about this kind of cultural crossover You know I think that's entirely possible and certainly in America there is a large group of people who are uncomfortable about secular culture in general and find that there is this sort of huge divide between between what they think of as secular culture and sacred culture or their faith tradition or wisdom tradition but that has not been true in my life and it's certainly not true in my tradition I've talked with a number of folks who are like Oh I'm so glad that you're doing this work because I I wanted to understand what's going on with this phenomenon and so I think that there are at the same time is there are people that are perhaps offended by you know how can you try and attach some sort of sacred meaning to something so violent there are also people who want to understand you know is is some kind of meaning being made in these things and if there is truth and beauty in these strange and kind of difficult works is it possible for us to understand something about ourselves and maybe even about our faith in that Greg lots to think about there thank you very much indeed and living with the Living Dead the wisdom of the zombie apocalypse is published by switching. Vestey press and do stay with me Greg Coming up we're going to be exploring what it is that helps build and break down a civilized society that's after the news. G.t.d. 95 f.m. 810 medium wave and on digital radio b.b.c. Radio Scotland news 11 o'clock with Korea McMartin for the 1st time Labor has committed to keeping the u.k. In the single market on a form of Customs Union for a number of years after leaving the e.u. The plan would be in accepting the free movement of labor beyond the official breaks at the age of March $21000.00 the Blick has more details for some time Labor's been criticised for having a slightly confused unclear policy on Bracks it's Ok to start the shadow projects that Secretary writing in The Observer this morning making one thing very clear that Labor would want a transitional period after the u.k. Leaves the e.u. Similar to the government but the key difference is Jaring that period it would keep the u.k. Within the Customs Union Free Trade Zone and also the single market which of course allows the freedom of movement of goods people money and services and money try to use a $4.00 foot sword as he confronted officers or to Buckingham Palace is still being questioned by counterterrorism police 3 officers were injured on Friday night as a restrained a 26 year old from Luton emergency workers in Texas are assessing the damage caused by the most powerful hurricane to reach us did it for 50 years her can Harvey has now been downgraded to a tropical storm Arthur weakened on making landfall but the storm has stalled over the cities of Houston and Corpus Christi bringing intense rain on par 4 winds. The Edinburgh Festival finish tomorrow the festival and Festival Fringe which both 1st held 70 years ago bring more than 4500000 people to the city every year and 330000000 pints this God He called me her questions have been raised by hosting a bill the current set up is with figures showing visitor numbers growing by a quarter in the last decade the comedy critic understand he writes for The Herald says a problem is being overblown the whole idea of Edinburgh you know where is it going to stop Is it getting bigger My opinion is Edinburgh over the centuries has put up was an awful lot more than than a festival and I just think as a city you know the festival be it's quite organic it's like you know when there's no room they'll be no room people can't come I don't I don't see it as being a problem and I do agree that we should kind of be celebrating its success rather than kind of puzzling what. The 45th anniversary of the Rock Against Racism movement will be celebrated in Glasgow tonight with a performance by a special concert the gig comes as governor Hill Scotland's with ethnically mixed community celebrates its diversity and you care has more details it's almost 40 years since performed at London's Victoria Park they were watched by a huge crowd of mostly young people Rock Against Racism and the anti Nazi League were organizing themselves against the National Front tonight as well and will reprise their role celebrate govern Hill's Rock Against Racism concert Toni Gad Robinson of the group says music has done a lot to bring people together govern here as Scotland's most diverse community 40 languages are spoken by 60 nationalities community leaders there see people want to celebrate their differences but also make a stand against hate at a time when there's been an increase in races graffiti in the community watch news not sport with John Barnes and under money will not play in this year's u.s. Open in New York he's withdrawn due to his ongoing hip injury the former champion at Flushing Meadows says the injuries too painful for him to win the tournament. Money is yet to make a decision whether he will play the rest of the year but hopes to come back as strong as before if I get myself and healthy there's no reason why I can't I mean I've been practicing year I'm. Competitive in practice when I'm not moving close to how I can well one and while I'm healthy so you know obviously those guys are a lot of the more players with injuries this year obviously Roger and Rafa last year they do for Celtic the same Rivaldo courtsey from the South African club I actually keep telling is off after the defender field the medical Meanwhile Aberdeen are 2 points clear of Celtic at the top of the Premiership they don't speak Partick Thistle for 3 something came from behind to draw 10 was in Johnston today done Di the bottom club play host to have been in at lunchtime before Rangers to make the journey to doing well to face Ross County in the 3 o'clock kickoff as live coverage of both much isn't sports on the b.b.c. Radio Scotland Floyd Mayweather stopped going to McGregor in the 10th round of their super fight in Las Vegas the quinces 50th Street victory the former welcome the champion had emails from a 2 year retirement to take on the Irish mixed martial arts star and Scotland were relegated to you know hockey Division 2 after they were beaten one know by the Czech Republic who also make the drop of Europe's top tier that's a sport Creek has a weather and it's a dry afternoon for most was some bright or sunny spells the best of which will be find further east it's got a across the Highlands and Islands in parts of the west of the kitchen all showers there and temperatures 19 to 21 across the mainland warmest of property I'm sure on the borders and the reach around 14 to 17 Celsius b.b.c. Radio Scotland news. This is Sunday morning with me Sally Magnusson before midday we explore the dark crevices of the stolen art world as the German food firm Dr Kurt opens its private collection but 1st watching them many fine programs about the partition of India recently it was impossible not to be struck again by how fatally easy it is for human beings to live as neighbors in more or less harmony one moment and turn on each other in the most savage ways the next a walk through that stills you in the same way it's happened all through history so what is it that punctures are the near of civilization so effortlessly and how do we protect against it joining me are the very Reverend Dr Lorna who'd former moderator of the Kirk's General Assembly and chair of the charity remembering Scotland and Dr Jane Smith founder and c.e.o. Of the Aegis trust an international organization that works to prevent genocide Welcome to you both and still with us is Greg Garrett theologian and professor of English at Baylor University Texas Lorna let me just start with you the church would say that what we're talking about here is original sin how do you understand it original sent I'm not to convince the vote that. The church would see and Christianity would say that we all come into the world as sinners and have to be redeemed Yes I agree with that but does that mean that everyone has that huge capacity within them for evil yet does it I think it probably does and that the it is this possibility within all of us to commit the most horrendous crimes and I certainly witnessed that in sa with people who had lived together who had worked together who had even joined in one another's celebrations. To suddenly almost overnight Tom on one another and those who had been trained a sure hatred he said then the most violent we mean we saw that with the Indian petition and what Dan too because it is the most disturbing thing and you you see it you hear about it and of course most people say well you know it wouldn't happen to me but the chances are it will and that's the most frightening thing about it because when I come back and talk about it it people will always say to me well it could never happen here I always say yes it could because I think within all of us and whether we call original sin or whether we call it that capacity within every single one of us to be either good or or evil or have to commit these acts and it's part of our humanity that we can be I don't know led and led by people at all Hitler and what we're seeing and the growth of nationalism and so many countries 30 to perform acts that in our most sane moments we would think would never ever be capable of James whatever theological definition we put on it seem it's important for us to keep trying to understand what human beings are capable of and to understand indeed that that does mean all of us if we're to guard against the worst of ourselves and the situations in which our basis nature seem to be able to overwhelm us so so easily we do need to understand it more because the scale of atrocities attent place committed by human beings against other human beings are on the same level as the biggest killers in the world in malaria and HIV And we invest and cancer we invest millions tens of millions in trying to understand how to prevent these and we need to apply the same public health principles to human behavior and how we can protect ourselves and every generation every decade there is a huge try. City or genocide takes place in one part of the world every continent every kind of of society is has experiences in some way or another so you know I agree with loners that none of us are immune from the us whether you know the Holocaust in your shrubbery and you know Rwanda where I spent the past 15 years working and living there again witnessed the most unbelievable Tallahassee you know in the Hutu population many played by the government exterminated nearly a 1000000 in the space of 3 months and this was again neighbors who went to school together work together and turned on each other seemingly overnight but I think what we learn is that it doesn't really just turn on like a switch that there is a a build up to there says that you know a process that leads to extermination and part of it is deliberately driven by fear that stoked up by the media stoked up by politicians that have got something to gain from this and it's potent when you come to believe that a particular group of people are the jews to see whether it's Muslims that you know they are a threat and existential threat to us too often lead to our community to our way of life and that if we don't deal with them in one way or another they will threaten our existence that somehow these primal responses can take hold of us and it does it changes almost by consensus that you know we know what has to be done to this particular group of people Greg I wonder what you understand almost philosophically if you like by civilization which is what human beings have tried to put in place over the ages to curb and direct our sort of instinctive natures it's the sort of supports that we put in place to kind of bring out what we hope and reinforce what we hope is the best of our humanity and when we see these breakdowns in civilization whether it's you know something that happens in up. Place on the other side of the world or it's happening in our own country it's you know it affects us so powerfully because as we were saying just a 2nd ago it it it's important for us to realize that we could be these people as well and I think that James hits it directly on the mark when he talks about fear being the thing that sort of shakes the foundations of civilization as we understand it and I don't think we have ever lived in a time where we had access to more information and lived in a time where it became possible for us to hear more information that corroborates are already kind of growing fears in the states of course many of us live in a sort of echo chamber where we're able to kind of choose what kind of news we're going to consume and everything that we hear in the world every sort of comment about the menace that we perceive just sort of gets built up higher and higher until we develop these stories that we're living in that are shaped by fear and we find it almost impossible to see the world in any other way and James that is something that we're all complicit in that we actually could do something about what we could and so the work that my colleagues at the Aegis trust of undertaken is to try and understand not only what causes us to perpetrate crimes but in times of you know atrocity when when there's so much collaboration in collusion there's always these handful of individuals that will go out of their way to to save lives including risking their own lives and that of their family to rescue others outside their own community in what characteristic do they have that we can learn from and it appears that they have 2 or 3 particular characteristics in the 1st is that they think for themselves that critical thinkers so when the media or politicians their own family standing up this fear about a particular group of people they're able to sort of see through that or if people are being dehumanized that you know the the a cockroach of the Jews of the Muslims a terrorist they're able to say well they don't look like this to me and the other . Specked attribute that they have is that of empathy that are able not only to have this is beyond sympathy only just able to put themselves in other people's shoes but they're actually able to act on that that knowledge and this really emphasizes how we have got an individual responsibility in situations where there is a descent potential descent into violence into breakdown of what we are calling civilization that we can do something about it in our own neighborhood in our own families and if everybody or isa critical mass of individuals have this great or critical thinking independent thinking great empathy for those outside of our own community we could create some resilience against this breakdown of peaceful societies but that takes a certain you know critical mass of us you know individuals to exhibit those values it is a chime learner with your yeah yeah absolutely but we also have to do with education and part of our program is not only seeing what happened in the expediency but it's coming back and having We have an education program for schools which fits into the chicken for excellence and the if you look at the states to genocide genocide doesn't happen in a vacuum it doesn't simply happen overnight and you know the 1st step even just prejudice that attitudes and to get particularly our young people to realize that these things that happens in the plague. Dealing with with other people who are different other people who have the bot of jokes Except And so it goes on and on and on is this is this what you say in fact to school children in a fake genocide starts here yeah it's in the playground that's right it absolutely It starts in the playground with with stereotyping people and making jokes about Reese and religion and not dealing with it and letting it go and that leads on to acts of prejudice to discrimination. And so it goes on and on and on when we don't deal with these attitudes which happen in every day life and so genocide just as it's been. It just doesn't happen overnight but it happens because of fears that are built up through trade users through jokes through something that we would think well it really doesn't matter that it's just a joke we've always said these things a bit with it we gypsy child learns or black people or lose them people just a joke about them but a fact goes on chair then it can continue and continue and continue and so we're spending and our effort particularly and the next year or so in education and dealing with our young people for them to see that I think Greg we often underestimate least you know personally I do sometimes I'm sure sitting on the side . Of many of these situations underestimate what it's like to be an individual within. Trying to be stroll and hold to some sort of ethical precept when others are doing something different when the pressures are upon you when you're perhaps being watched by the authorities in Germany or whatever it might be is easy to thing Oh if I'd been there you know there's no way I'd have participated in all that you know just to briefly sort of take us back to the conversation we were having about the zombie apocalypse one of the strange things is we watch the shows about that where all of the supports of civilization been pulled out from under the characters and they're having to decide how they're going to be haven. They're put in a number of these really difficult situations that are often fear driven and they're based on there's not enough of this there's not enough of this there's not enough of this and the decisions that they make even though we hope that we would not make them we can sort of understand why they do make them and I think that's one of the ways that we can talk about how conscious examination of the stories that we consume the stories that are part of our culture actually help illuminates the decisions that we see human beings making right in front of us and so in Charlottesville when white supremacists are marching in the streets it is a story that they're living in and sister Henri that's been shaped by pop culture and narratives that they've consumed in America about the place that they occupy in the world and how that place is now jeopardized and I think for me one of the things that's really interesting is how story can help us get into the plight of the people being forced to make these difficult decisions as well as expose us to the lives of those that we think of as somehow or other to us different from us and help us recognize that we all share the same essential humanity James Gregg mentions Charlotte the old There's other indications in society that I think people sense are beginning to tip does into something dangerous in society today do you sense that I what do we do about it how do we protect civilization. Yeah having observed various states where that have descended into right genocide and crimes against humanity I do worry about some of the signs we have right across Europe and North America neo nazis white supremacist Charlottesville there but there is a a trend across Europe of extremism and I think even more insidious is when we look at media for example in the 19th thirty's not just in Germany but across Europe or in Rwanda in the run up to the genocide the way in which. I. Dripped drip you know stereotyping you know certain groups of people that actually stoke this fear we do see the instant day in our own media in our own culture and it's something that I think we should be worried about because on the one hand you know one of the protections of what we call in peaceful societies civilized nations is you know is freedom of the press and freedom of speech and rule of law or and and yet at times when societies broken down these very I guess pillars of civilization can be used to stir up violence and be wielded against groups of people so you know we need to be you know very mindful of that and worried about it and I think it comes back again to the point that loan amount that you know education is really key in this and again in Rwanda my colleagues in developing their education program are actually drawing from what Greg as it was referred to actually through storytelling not about zombies but about storytelling about individuals and communities that have actually been through a breakdown bring through to men this hatred and how to rebuild to somehow reconciled overcome that fear and hatred we talk about it could he say if society because he's a society wasn't something I'd come up against before I don't talk to a tolerant society you know told them in suggests that you're holding back you told anything negative feelings and negative behavior you're putting up with one another when that's the case then there's every chance of things wreaking day creators actually he's of society is respecting one another's deficiencies celebrating one another differences and recognising these enrich local communities and the way to society so we have to move just from told he can one another to that he's in this of a common humanity Lorna Hood Jim Smith and Greg Garrett thank you to all of you. Come Allman Brothers and little Lawrence with. More than 70 years after the end of the 2nd World War a major German food processor Dr Kirk has opened its private collection to the world in doing so it shed light on the collections origins and what the firm has described as the dark shadow of its own activities in the 1930 s. And forty's when the company amassed stolen art during the Nazi era the search for the former owners of the Nazis stolen art who were mostly Jewish has often been initiated by descendants piecing together whatever information they can find a task of course complicated by the passage of time Well joining me to give some insight into the world of stolen artifacts is the art historian Ellis welcome and hello this German company opening up its art collection allowing light to be thrown on the ill gotten nature of much of it how common a gesture is this note is not common enough I think but they may have been stimulated by the. Recovery from the son of Hitler's paintings porter who whose father left him a legacy of hundreds and hundreds of paintings didn't want Goebbels and Golding didn't want and what was left he took home with them and they discovered I think the flattened student was something like hundreds and this job sitting on top of them is it any surprise to you that Lutie dark from the thirty's and forty's is still misplaced it sits original ownership unresolved the fact that a farm opens up its private collection is news well I think we have the flush sort of generation and might be going speaking a tongue but I think it is to recognize it because I deliver the search uneek in Century and that was Ok nice parties to those parties interested patrons of a. Respectable people polish who went over to the live which was Napoleon collection of looted and they went over to see it and they're not going I sort of we boasting to one another they couldn't think of the poor people who from whom they have been stool and not have it been gain so I think p.t. It is a time of guilt and we know we recognize it still and it's looted and it's part of the damage done by war in terms of the 2nd World War We're now talking many decades what are the main problems in getting something like Nazi loot returned to its rightful owner just finding them I think just finding them because nobody's going to be to clear the book where that came from a lot of people don't know where it came from the ones who have it they don't even know I mean even recently in Scotland has been stolen art has been going through an auction and salt I mean this happens all the time of the Nazis were pretty good at record keeping and yeah but I mean I think not the individuals may not have had that acres I mean I was enough. That should not have had some of the paintings that I had but somebody had given where they come from they could find my good I mean I know I know a wee bit about a new farmer good of a forty's some of the bin things that was in this family so that has been brought it back from the war I mean I suppose they did know that it wasn't right to have them but they had them it does seem to be more and more descendants that are taking up the cudgels here I suppose because emotionally it would have been very draining for the survivors of war and Holocaust to fight for what are at the end of the day I suppose only possessions Yeah but I think it's a way of striking back on behalf of those who have died often they do and somebody in the family has died some the who was close to the event and the maybe the. Presence has stalked any fossil they didn't want no one they didn't want the story to be told then suddenly they go and the young ones go right let's let's get this rating this wrong Right now been talking about the World War colossal amount of European art as displaced then but are we seeing do you think something similar now happening in the Middle East going on here I mean there's a horrible story about in Baghdad in Iraq they have a I mean it's one of the all the cities you know that I know that and they have a Nashville logical museum but just got treasures unknowen in it I mean huge in my chair and the kid later some of them got together and actually slept in the building tried to stop looters coming in and many of them were killed when the gates opened and when the city was being relieved to believe it was when the looters when and these people died some of them trying to save us know who it was for these species of go on and know that it's not only in the Middle East but all over Afghanistan we've seen terrible looting as well it's going on all the time the easy please your own experiences as a former art curator now a historian of art being stolen and reemerging elsewhere what what stories do you hear Well I was at one point looking after a child any Macintosh shows and of course we knew that we were target we were a target any place that's a target what happened one time was the most amazing thing police arrived at my door because I had to live in that has been the small cottage the police came to the door and what they brought was not that we were going to be attacked by robbers but that robbers had been apprehended thieves in another place not fired a we. And they had maps and clearly showed everything they needed even my comings and goings No that's quite a shock to the system. But you know what I mean it's there and in black and white and these gangs and organized very organized in the cliff it's an extraordinary world. Has it opened up you know the art world more about what it has in its archives and compared to when you were young artist you know and it was always more difficult to actually find that written proof of things than it was to see the works of art in my day you had you went with a letter of introduction from your professor something and this letter of introduction got you and I went to Vatican. To my letter. But if those days you could wonder about if you had this later but now I would think it's much harder even getting into archives you know. It's been fascinating talking to you hearing you're insights and you're reminiscences do stay on for a bit though because I want to get your take on a particular art piece will be talking about challenging the way we think about refugees 1st though here's Sly and The Family Stone with everyday people. It's 10 months since the Cali jungle in France began being dismantled its largest account held nearly $10000.00 refugees and migrants having survived often perilous journeys to the European mainland they lived in pretty appalling. Conditions near the channel tunnel while trying to get into Britain Luisa Richter and Harry Reid are charity workers who run workshops and language classes in the jungle together with her a refugee from Afghanistan they've no recreated part of the camp in a corner of summer hole Featuring art works by refugees and documentary footage it's called protest to money we met the team as they recreated the shelters. My name's Louie director I'm French British actress I'm here but Harry Reid. To set up the next mission that. She could. So that's missions Cooper testimony an echo of the camp and we created this exhibition from our works which were created by refugees in the Cali jungle in 2016 and by people who work with refugees . In the world. So we're here in the only way that leads to our space the or generator and it's stocked with pellets that we will be using to the last 2 shelters and come through. This round despite rough rough on the left. To pick it shows to. Be exhibiting art works talk painting we've got a little space here in the middle of very small Where. He's staying here for the whole length of August will be that he's an artist and he'll be doing participative activities. Like 14 months I'm hearing the. So I came here to help my friends to. The emergence of the jungle which. Last year 3 months on. With my work work more or I want to you know continue my laws I want to you know keep myself busy work. Because I mean to show to the people I'm not using this I can do. Things so I can do recycling up cycling and everything to do you know help myself but. Show it to the people. Ok. It's different themes in each shelter so on the right we come to you documentary says one of them is large and a lot of people can see in the space that one is the 2nd shelter is much smaller it's very long and thin and this is going to show more serious documentaries only a couple people can be in the space of one so it's a little bit more quiet it's possibly more difficult for people to watch. The journey to this space as part of the exhibition. Perhaps because hard to find perhaps it will be annoying to some people but we can't find it and they're coming to the face and what they face to face apart from the shelters around them it's a huge big brick wall and to suddenly find it completely encircled by. Barbed wire on the right on the left and then the space that we've created within that space but it's going to be very tight to move in between the shelters it's going to be quite tight and uncomfortable and we hope people will bump into each other and feel you know whatever that sensation that brings up is also completely part of the reflection that. People have and then there's the sound well it's going to be going on sounds that we preclude it from the jungle. That will go on in the space so. We hope it will feel quite the routing and I have friends in the frozen learning finding out how people feel about the space is extremely important to us because we're really concerned about the ethics of what we're doing hair is obviously it's a bit controversial it's something we thought about over and over again about the rights of the people to have their works and all right the rights of the people who are coming to see it hear him for he was a man of faith to be so question we want to explore in this so somebody comes in and they say actually I feel quite comfortable here I don't really agree with this I'm not perfect that's what we want to find out is where are the limits what is the I think the authentic refutation and already we're. Going to cross the message that supporting refugees in a practical way is the priority. Of. The organizers and artists involved in protest of money art historian and Alice is still with me here you've seen this exhibition at summer hole and what did you make of it well fitting moving and one of the creations the 1st question is painted on the the we in that is painted do not destroy my hope please and it's like all those entrances that you see you know what makes you free your Abandon hope all and this is another message because these people have lost their hope they're trying to get to the u.k. a Lot of them most of them from what I gather and they've reached this horrible place I mean it does put tree the filth in the school and in a way because it's not it's on the end as as they see it and you're placed in but some of the things that you see is just horrifying and shocked you and want you want to help I visited the jungle and it was squalid and disturbing in all sorts of ways but there were nuances there to people's reasons for being there involving both tragedy and. Some cases opportunism I just wonder if there's any sense in the exhibition of the complexity of some of these scenarios and indeed of their political response to them yes I was pleased to know that there was an art piece in the galley that in the jungle they had a place where people could go and bin it and they had implements for that was also a police hut where they went and told the tales in restated poems of great poetry so there was people making food for them there were all sorts of things going on I think the horror of it the what they were feeling overruled everything like that you know the feelings of these people as the artist who was on the paintings that they are they've made little sculptures a sculpture in on a table top of the whole village made with me but there's also somebody that the French police have just shown you see actually more the old in on the table top the there's all sorts of things going on to the artistic endeavor but the the strongest hope is that they get out of fear so it keeps you busy on the right side of sentimentality Yes which is always a danger with Testart Yes it is over the danger because it saw overdone but this has got other elements and you know you learn about those but I don't think they are being afraid but telling for the horrors and I think we have to understand that I think because we are in danger of ignoring them all these things touch your heart it says at the end because one piece it's not at the end and it's one little job is it 9 going to tell God what they did with us just to have been. Very moved thank you very much for joining us and protests to many runs until the 24th of September in Edinburgh as a summer home and if you like to hear more from herself her talking pictures series with. Will be broadcast this Tuesday on the Janice precise show from 2. Pm here on b.b.c. Radio Scotland. We Rosemary and garlic with I'm here you're listening to Sunday morning with me Sally Magnusson if you're on line do remember to like the b.b.c. Radio Scotland Facebook page and follow us on Twitter at b.b.c. Radio Scott very smallest babies we have here could be 500 grams we can make some of these changes and we can see these rates of childhood obesity go down what you think in the context of gathering more illnesses most of the diseases are not caused by aging are caused by the environment in which we live to market McCartney has been looking at how we depend on the any chase in various stages of our lives and how we can reduce the pressures it's facing our mission really is to help people make healthier choices about our call last week in order to catch up on the b.b.c. I Player and listen tomorrow at 130 as the series concludes the one last forever we don't last forever cradle to grave on b.b.c. Radio Scotland to what extent do videogames influence our moral thinking whether it's choosing good or bad pursuing happiness or killing enemies interactive video games which are becoming every day more sophisticated realistic and frankly interesting have the ability to test and perhaps refine our intuitions in all sorts of ways but is it possible for our moral choices in life to be genuinely honed through gaming Dan Grilli or policy is the co-author of a new book called 10 Things videogames can teach us and Carol Ellison is a narrative designer of video games and the. Both join me now welcome to you both who are down and what way do videogames test our moral decision making I think they test them in a similar way to other forms of media in that they set examples of pros about ways of living but they have a significant difference in their interactive so when you see a moral choice in a movie you have to follow along with a protectionist but in a video game you get to make up moral choice you get to decide whether you're going to be good or evil whether you're going to be a virtue ethicist or utilitarian you're going to whether going to side to do the right thing or the thing that make most people happy what give us a sense of of the range of games out there now and what they're inviting players to do because I take it we're not talking Mario Kart you. Know there are lots of games like America which you could interpret more content into them but they don't have it natively in there but then since games like the ultimate series which were a series of roleplaying games in the ninety's or Bio Shock which was a kind of combat oriented game in a degraded Art Deco world which was all based on the philosophy and round and it was a blockbuster game these these games have used philosophical concepts at least for entertainment purposes and there's the indie game sector where people are creating their own games Eve You got a whole range of different sorts of games there as well yeah there's games like that dragon cancer which was a particularly poignant exit Jesus by 2 parents about the death of their son from cancer theirs to the moon which was again a kind of combination of Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind and Zelda where you dived into the memories of a dying man to try and fix them and make his life his last moments happier. There been so many games like this so much is another it's a horror game but it explores questions of humanity and transhumanism And really what it is to have an identity and where what we consider a valuable morrow. Dr Wood we can see that they are a valuable Moraitis if they had all the capabilities and characteristics of a human being so there were lots of games like camera you design games you essentially write the story of the game how much responsibility do you feel that narrative designers have to consider the ethics of the games and why and what players will draw from them. Largely I think that we have the same responsibilities most other media in terms of I think what we're interested in is how interesting the choices are are higher much they're concerned with us as human beings than our choices and I often think about. Revealing for example characters constraints and what has actually led them to the circumstances where they have to make a very difficult choice The Walking Dead series for example is a really good example of where all of the choices that you get to choose from are awful ones all of them are bad choices I think a lot of games until around to right now I have considered either a good choice or a bad choice binary but the walking dead is interesting because it presents maybe 4 or 5 choices and none of them seem to be a very good choice on a lot a lot of that game is actually about dealing with the choices that you have made so I'm trying to make the best of everything and I think that's more interesting to me now I was the idea that you might explore characters who are who are not like yourself who have a different set of circumstances but you're also kind of exploring what it's what made them into that person and what kind of constraints they're working with in life and I think that's very revealing and important for a game designer Yeah this is fascinating because Don I was introduced to that game that you were talking about earlier that takes you through the experience of having a terminally ill child I have to say I was a bit queasy at 1st and the idea of turning such a profound tragedy into a game but there's no doubt that it enhanced my empathy for the grieving father I was invited to identify with the whole thing actually very moving and it was doing exactly what Kara was talking about it's taking me insight somebody else's experience and insisting that I. Try and understand Yes I guess that's a fundamental part of the interactivity of games is that they whether you believe in free will or not which is obviously a deep philosophical question the games have the interactivity they have the agency so they make you they involve you in the. In the actions of the lives of the people you're controlling when there's a wonderful recent game called or what remains of a thing which is essentially a linear game you don't have any options as to what you're really doing you either choose to do the thing that progress is a story line or the game stops but the fact that it's interactive and the fact that it's this way as I understand style. Family saga told through flashbacks and told through interactions with all the families possessions in their rooms in this tumble down house it gives it so much more richness than just watching it on a screen the fact that your experiencing those moments with the protectionist and what's what's your view of free will because you do within games you do talk about that a lot of the book. Yeah I mean obviously there's a question of most philosophers whether free will exists at all even the kind of philosophers who do accept it exists they tend to say that it is they think because we call incompatibilities and they tend to believe that it's extremely constrained it is an extremely old version of would not fit with the common world view of what free will is so they weak set that we kind of determine by our genes and by our environment and that there's nothing else really in there that makes up apart from that so there's a question of what how what you can ascribe agency to a person and exact justice on a person if they aren't responsible for everything that they owe I mean it's interesting for me because I'm a designer and I create the constraints in which these characters are actually working so it's one of those things very when you try to look at free will in video games like as a designer I look at the fact that the environment the characters and the way I've written things are absolutely directly affecting the way the player experiences the world so it's really an interesting question for me to contemplate also you know kind of the God of the videogame world as a designer you're all the person shaping their lives so if you believe in God and that's karma Yes it's Kara Carr is the Gods and this is what a great free didn't Ok. The Go do your own universe exactly I mean the designer John maritally wrote on his blog once I'm going to paraphrase empirics I don't exactly remember what he wrote but he said something really interesting he said something like Most games are a mess that the designer has created for the player to clean up and I think that's a really interesting way of thinking about the playground idea of games where it's like here are a number of like objects that you can play around with and see what you think about them and what you can use them for but Carol if you are God does not increase your moral responsibility I mean for instance empathy I think we can all understand and it seems that you know seems a good thing but some war. Games for instance do give the player the opportunity to kill indiscriminately and you know there are even games that reward you for killing a paramedic who's come to assisted seeing how does the enjoyment you get from killing a paramedic and it's anyone's ethics and where does the responsibility of the the narrative designer lie there I think we do have some responsibility definitely I think thinking about systems and in games on what they actually say as an overall message is very very important to me and a lot of other designers for example like like giving a player points for of a violent act is saying something about your world the world that you have created but that's not to say that we shouldn't be making those worlds for me my primary concern is to make original interesting worlds and a lot of the time I mean even Hollywood bought blockbusters tend to focus on like gangsters and crime unlike how glamorous those things are how climbers violence is so it's not a surprise to me that games focus on that particular theme a lot as well but for me like what's more interesting these days is focusing on the idea of relationships and games relationships between characters how we talk to each other how we relate to each other and like you say these games that involve empathy and require empathy from you that's much more interesting to me these days and I think that as games mature I think players are also looking for those particular games to done there are games that rather cleverly Mulkey you for your choices that you know make you wonder if mass slaughter or whatever really was such a bright idea I mean that's that's subtle stuff yeah I mean the political games in particular which range from the blockbuster games the car works on to small indie titles and they are there are games that yeah explore your motivation leave. You in positions where you where you have difficult decisions I mean as a you know the great game called papers please where you are a border guard on the border to tell a terror in states and you have to make decisions about letting dissidents through or not as they come up to your booth but a lot of your game is actually trying to manage the paperwork because you've got limited time to work out what you're doing will check the passports and look at all the new regulations that come through every day and you've also got to worry about your family who you are relying on you rely on your income so the whole horrible balance there of moralities and political ideologies which Yeah which is a hard thing to deal with and again I wonder both of you finally some tech firms now appoint ethical experts to analyze the effect of their products such as should the gaming industry be following it Carol. That's an interesting question I think I think largely tech things like Google and search engines and social media I think they actually have a more invasive power over us and currently they have the ability to really surveil what we do and. How we think and I think actually regulating that monopoly to me is a much bigger thing than trying to regulate entertainment I guess to a certain extent some games like Free to Play have metrics that measure you know your habits and I don't really think that's very healthy at either but I think the thing that really worries me about the monopoly that Google for example has over us is that essentially it is an invasive force on our lives and a lot of the algorithms that that it uses are and Hartley biased because humans are biased I think recently there is some there is news stories about how it can be quite racist because a lot of people are Googling particularly racist things and then the algorithm gets shifted towards those ideals so I definitely think that we should be considering ethics but I'm not sure that it should be about like the morality inside or themes inside of a game what I primarily concerned about is the surveillance aspect of these things done more protections for the gaming industry or or for the players within the gaming industry I we I work notions of as I wrote the book I joined a tech company called improbable who work on making these kind of substrates the back and forth massive complex persistent simulations we joke we're going to try and build the matrix we do think about ethical issues all the time we do you know we're always talking about this stuff we're always communicating with each other about what problems they're going to be but we look at so in to. Action and we see these dystopian science fiction worlds of Blade Runner and Snow Crash and the amounts are and we see it want to make an aspirational version of those we want to see you know those predictions of the moment automation is going to make most people in the world redundant that most people will be structurally employed forever. We see massive simulations of massive virtual worlds away from keeping people occupied keeping people happy while they got very little to do I don't see a problem with that but I can understand that that cultural shift is something that moral entrepreneurs seize on to make moral panics and they always have to and they did it with rock n roll they did it with video nasties and it would indeed they did it with video games are doing it with we are they'll do it with virtual worlds fascinating stuff Dan and Kara thank you very much for joining us this morning and Dan's book co-written with Jordan Erika Weber is called 10 Things videogames can teach us and it's published by Robinson thanks to all my guests this morning next week a powerful and moving Edinburgh International Book Festival conversation with the Icelandic writer thought this over until then good bye.

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