1. Fathers Roses: Wole Soyinka
2000-01-02
79m
The African Nobel Prize winner for literature 1986 reflects on beauty and consolation during the civil war and his imprisonment during the military coup in Nigeria (1966) in which he was politically active. Soyinka tells the story of the singing by the prisoners on an execution day.
2. Homecoming: Roger Scruton
2000-01-09
93m
Reactionary, contrary, controversial: all labels that have been stuck on the British philosopher Roger Scruton over the years. Once a modernist philosopher, Scruton is now averse to modern philosophical movements such as poststructuralism and postmodernism. An important theme in his work is the alienation of contemporary man from the true values of life.
3. Alone on the mountain: Jane Goodall
2000-01-16
80m
Interview with Jane Goodall, British writer and ethologist (in a studio). Goodall left for Africa at the age of 23 and has since been studying a group of wild chimpanzees in Gombe or Gombe Stream National Park in Tanzania. Goodall talks about nature, the rainforest as solace, love, the death of her husband, life after this life, grief, loneliness, mysticism, reconciliation, ecstasy, peacefulness, chimpanzees, telepathy, life goals, beauty, spiritual evolution, God, hope, awareness of death, fear, humor and dogs.
4. The Code of Pasternak: George Steiner
2000-01-23
80m
Interview with George Steiner, British literary critic and writer (in his home in Cambridge, Great Britain). Steiner talks about beauty, solace, fear, wonder, memory, his photographic memory and the extinction of collective memory: the fact that readers no longer recognize references in literature. In this context, Steiner reads a fragment from Ernest Hemingway's 'Fiesta: The sun also rises'. He also talks about Chinese wisdom following the excavation and reburial of terracotta statues from graves in Szetsjwan in China, Pasternak's code, the work of Sören Kierkegaard and Martin Heidegger, the innumerability/beauty of detail, the painting 'The Reading Philosopher' by Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin, falling in love, love and friendship, his passion for art, literature, music, philosophy, love for animals, humanity, self-knowledge, Franz Schubert, the dark side of life and atrocities such as those committed during the Second World War.
5. The End of the Thirteenth: Vladimir Ashkenazy
2000-01-30
87m
Interview with Vladimir Ashkenazy, Russian pianist and conductor (in the large rehearsal hall of the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester in the building of the Sender Freies Berlin on Masurenallee in Berlin). Ashkenzay sits at a piano and talks about beauty, consolation, love and hope. He has chosen a number of pieces of music as examples of beauty and consolation, parts of which he plays at the piano.
6. Thor, Newton, Einstein: Steven Weinberg
2000-02-06
74m
Interview with Steven Weinberg, American theoretical physicist (in his office at the University of Texas in Austin, Texas). Weinberg talks about the demythologization of the world and the consolation for this loss that can be found in the beauty of physical theories. He compares the beauty of the laws of physics (including Albert Einstein's theory of relativity) with perfection in artistic expressions such as the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Attention is also paid to symmetrical principles, the insoluble question "why?" and the current trend to make something magical out of science. Weinberg explains why he disapproves of this trend. Weinberg's opinion that religion is a myth that will disappear is also discussed.
7. Guilt: Martha Nussbaum
2000-02-13
85m
Interview with Martha Nussbaum (in her Chicago apartment, located on Lake Michigan, near Harold Washington Park). Nussbaum talks about what philosophy means to her, the book she is writing about human emotions, the attempt at reconciliation with her mother through this book, her childhood, the relationship she had with her father, her mother who became an alcoholic, and the marriage and divorce of her parents.
8. You Are There and You Are Not: Karel Appel
2000-02-20
57m
Interview with Karel Appel, Dutch painter. Appel has specially selected eight of his paintings for the interview as symbols of beauty and comfort. Appel talks about these eight paintings, his way of working, his studios, mixing different colors of paint, the color red, his birthplace Amsterdam, his youth, wandering the streets in big cities at night, being deeply affected by objects or events, the work of Rembrandt and Van Gogh and the death of his wife. In addition, at Kayzer's request, he reads one of his poems about Amsterdam (from his poetry collection 'Ode aan het rood').
9. The Greatest Mystery Is Not the Universe: Edward Witten
2000-02-27
89m
Interview with Edward Witten, American theoretical physicist (in a room at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey). Witten talks about solving physics riddles, developments in his field, happiness, religion, skepticism, the Big Bang, quantum mechanics, relativity theory, string theory, and the concepts of space and time.
10. Dear Mother: Elizabeth Loftus
2000-03-05
73m
Interview with Elizabeth Loftus, American psychologist (in her home in Seattle, overlooking Union Bay, a bay in Lake Washington). The interview is preceded by the story of a couple who are in therapy with Loftus. They tell about their daughter who has (wrongly) accused her father of sexual abuse. The couple sought help from Loftus, because she specializes in the influence of memories on memory, also known as the influence of suggestion (by therapists) on memory.
11. When My Father Was Still Big: Rutger Kopland
2000-03-12
74m
Interview with Rutger Kopland, Dutch poet (pseudonym of Rudy van den Hoofdakker, psychiatrist) (in his garden house/study in Glimmen, located on the Assen - Groningen railway line). Kopland talks about his daughters, his youth, happiness, adulthood versus the youthful perspective, his grandparents, health, his heart problems/infarction, the emotional charge and intensity of memories, melancholy, glorification of childhood, homesickness, poetry, the experience of comfort and beauty, finiteness, (death) fear, his mother and father and their death, emotion and fascination. Kopland recites some of his poems during the interview.
12. What's Mary Doing in the Cave: Gary Lynch
2000-03-19
89m
Interview with Gary Lynch (in a converted workspace trailer next to the buildings of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory at the University of California, Irvine, as well as in the center's lab). Lynch talks about his unhappy childhood, finding meaning in life, how a memory is recorded in the brain, why the brain ages, how brain cells communicate with each other, mortality, the aging process, and the loss of childhood memories.
13. John the Myth: Stephen Jay Gould
2000-03-26
76m
Interview with Stephen Jay Gould, American paleontologist and evolutionary biologist (in his office at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, part of the Harvard Museum of Natural History in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Jordan Hall of the New England Conservatory in Boston). Gould talks about sports, baseball, Joe DiMaggio, modern heroes and myths, science, evolution, the theory of evolution, humanity, childhood memories, eternity and infinity, beauty, regularity, calendars, scientific questions and answers, the land snail, biological diversity, death, Johann Sebastian Bach's 'St. John Passion', religion and music.
14. The Poetics of the Album: Dubravka Ugrešić
2000-04-02
62m
Interview with Dubravka Ugresic, Croatian writer. Using photos and excerpts from her books, Ugresic talks about the role of photos and photo albums in her life (it's about personal photos, not about the photo as part of visual art), why photos move her, about her memories of photos in her childhood and the influence of a photo of her father shortly after his death.
15. Ugly Ears: Simon Schama
2000-04-09
93m
Interview with Simon Schama, British historian (in a room at The Ritz hotel on Piccadilly in London, overlooking Green Park). Schama talks about the beauty of history that he recognized as a child, his Jewish background, the necessity of history, because it offers a counterbalance to the dangerous limitations of the present and his poetic approach to history instead of finding out historical facts. Schama discusses a passage from his book 'Landscape and Memory' that is about his journey through Poland, from which his family was expelled.
