Ponder

Rob and Nathan visit the Guggenheim Musuem to view an exhibition of early modernist painter, Marc Chagall; 'Chagall. The Breakthrough Years, 1911–1919'

What makes us human? Are cities still for everyone? Who wants to live forever? These are a few of the questions posed by The Future Starts Here at London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, an exhibition which looks at how emerging technologies will affect our lives in the near future, and what choices we have to influence their development.

Ronnie and Rob have been pondering the 100+ objects on display that point towards where society might be headed.

In the new Ponder Extra, Canadian writer Nadim Roberts tells the extraordinary story of three Inuit boys who ran away from a brutal residential school. What happened to them? What are the responsibilities of journalists in telling stories like these? Did S-Town get it right? Read Nadim’s story in Granta here: https://granta.com/mangilaluks-highway/

In 1921, T.S. Eliot spent a few weeks in Margate, Kent, at a crucial moment in his life and career. Here he reflected on the fractured world in the aftermath of the Great War and penned lines for his masterpiece, The Waste Land. In this new Ponder Extra, Nathan and Rob journey to Margate to see Journeys with The Waste Land, a major art exhibition exploring the significance of T.S. Eliot’s poem through the visual arts. 

The medium is the message - music, moves and murals. In our second episode of Ponder, we hear how, despite being oceans apart, American/Australian duo Vallis Alps have been rapidly gaining an international fanbase. We learn from journalist Maziar Bahari about how an important campaign, about the right to education, is given a voice through the medium of street art and finally, we hear how Massachusetts based Mtali Shaka Banda is changing the way jazz is heard, through a socially conscious narrative, influenced by his own hardships.

The music of American composer Philip Glass comes under the spotlight in the first Ponder Extra podcast. His opera Satyagraha, evoking the life and mission of Mahatma Gandhi, has opened in London in a spectacular production by English National Opera. Ponder was at the opening night and spoke to tenor Toby Spence about playing Gandhi and his fascinating life and interests. Photos by Donald Cooper. Music courtesy of ENO.

Orthodox Jews, literary views and surfin’ tunes.

In this month’s episode the team ponders a Yiddish language movie about a young father who has lost his wife, George Saunders’ Man Booker prize winning literary masterpiece and the new sound of surf music.