I Feel Therefore I Am

Episode

Title

First
Broadcast

Repeated

Comments

From Facts To Feelings

20230214

20230320 (R4)

It's become easy to explain this fault line as something peculiarly modern, a cocktail of culture wars and social media frenzy. But is this right? Could there be a longer, deeper and more complicated story? The history of the rational Enlightenment is familiar, but we don't talk so much about how and why we might have come to privilege personal feelings and experiences.

Professor Abigail Williams begins with the cultural notion that personal feelings matter and individual experience might in some ways be the ultimate truth. From the cult of sensibility to the birth of Romanticism, Freud's couch to Oprah Winfrey's celebrity interviews, how does feeling offer a different way of seeing the world?

Who Owns The Truth?

20230221

20230327 (R4)

In the second programme in the series, Professor Abigail Williams explores how subjective experience and individual feeling has offered a profound challenge to institutional authority, from John Bunyan's Pilgrims to the French Revolution and beyond.

Abigail looks back at Michael Gove's claim that people 'have had enough of experts' and explores how a new focus on lived experience is reshaping our institutions, from the patients invited onto NHS Lived Experience Panels to Victim Impact statements in courtrooms. Who knows more about crime, illness or poverty, someone who has experienced it or someone who has studied it?

But it's hard to value both 'my truth' and 'your truth' without descending into identity politics, outrage and intolerance. And what happens to our institutions when we no longer agree on who knows best: the person with expertise or the person with first-hand experience?

03 LAST

The Multiverse Of Truth

20230228

20230403 (R4)

In the final programme in the series, Professor Abigail Williams tackles the idea that a single objective truth is now being replaced by the idea of multiple truths. This investigation into the multiverse of truth takes us on a journey from Descartes to Derrida via the parallel worlds of science-fiction and the online multiverse.

How do we know things, how do we value both 'my truth' and 'your truth' and is the new focus on personal feeling and subjective truths something to celebrate or fear?

Episodes

Episode	Title	First Broadcast	Repeated	Comments
01	From Facts To Feelings	20230214	20230320 (R4)	It's become easy to explain this fault line as something peculiarly modern, a cocktail of culture wars and social media frenzy. But is this right? Could there be a longer, deeper and more complicated story? The history of the rational Enlightenment is familiar, but we don't talk so much about how and why we might have come to privilege personal feelings and experiences. Professor Abigail Williams begins with the cultural notion that personal feelings matter and individual experience might in some ways be the ultimate truth. From the cult of sensibility to the birth of Romanticism, Freud's couch to Oprah Winfrey's celebrity interviews, how does feeling offer a different way of seeing the world?
02	Who Owns The Truth?	20230221	20230327 (R4)	In the second programme in the series, Professor Abigail Williams explores how subjective experience and individual feeling has offered a profound challenge to institutional authority, from John Bunyan's Pilgrims to the French Revolution and beyond. Abigail looks back at Michael Gove's claim that people 'have had enough of experts' and explores how a new focus on lived experience is reshaping our institutions, from the patients invited onto NHS Lived Experience Panels to Victim Impact statements in courtrooms. Who knows more about crime, illness or poverty, someone who has experienced it or someone who has studied it? But it's hard to value both 'my truth' and 'your truth' without descending into identity politics, outrage and intolerance. And what happens to our institutions when we no longer agree on who knows best: the person with expertise or the person with first-hand experience?
03 LAST	The Multiverse Of Truth	20230228	20230403 (R4)	In the final programme in the series, Professor Abigail Williams tackles the idea that a single objective truth is now being replaced by the idea of multiple truths. This investigation into the multiverse of truth takes us on a journey from Descartes to Derrida via the parallel worlds of science-fiction and the online multiverse. How do we know things, how do we value both 'my truth' and 'your truth' and is the new focus on personal feeling and subjective truths something to celebrate or fear?