Friday May 11

CHRISTIE WATSON – on the universal language of kindness.

We have or will all be nursed at some point during our lives and maybe nurse loved ones too. Nursing is a profession defined by acts of care, compassion, and kindness. Nurses are seen as the backbone of the NHS, which this year celebrates its seventieth anniversary.

Before becoming a prize-winning author, Christie Watson was a registered nurse, for twenty years. Now, in her third book, The Language of Kindness, set to be one of the most talked-about books in 2018, we get a unique insider account, in turn tender and fierce, compassionate and kind, of life on the wards.

RACHEL HEWITT – on the years that forged the modern mind.

Presented in association with Arts and Humanities Research Council

In the late eighteenth century, Britain underwent what was then called ‘the most important of all revolutions…a revolution in sentiments’.

British radicals concocted new political worlds to enshrine healthier human emotions and relationships.

But by the end of the century, feverish optimism had given way to bleak disappointment, and changed the way we think about human need and longing.

A Revolution of Feeling by prize-winning author Rachel Hewitt is a vivid and absorbing account of the beginning of an emotional landscape preoccupied by guilt, sin, failure, resignation, and repression, and the origins of our contemporary approach to feeling and desire.

ALAN WINFIELD – on the societal impact of Robotics and Artificial intelligence.

Presented in association with the Swindon Philosophical Society

What is the Artificial Intelligence that makes robots smart? What is the future of robots in society? What are the ethical perspectives of Artificial Intelligence? Any other questions?

Professor of Robot Ethics at UWE, co-founder of the Bristol Robotics Laboratory, guest on Radio 4’s Life Scientific, Alan Winfield is an advocate for robot ethics and author of Robotics: a very short introduction. In it, he explains how it is that robotics can be both a success story and a disappointment, how robots can be both ordinary and remarkable, and looks at the science behind them and their applications to everyday life.