For 48 hours, from March 21st to 22nd, the Radio France app will be in the colors of France Culture with a special program “Changez-vous les idées”. From knowledge, humor, and escape: France Culture takes you elsewhere for a weekend.
The world rumbles and everything is accelerating. But have faith, spring is coming with its promise of renewal. France Culture accompanies you in this new impulse: to laugh, dream, escape, and breathe thanks to a selection of podcasts concocted for the occasion. Because changing ideas is also about giving yourself new ones.
Laugh, about everything!
There are a thousand ways to disconnect. The first, and perhaps the best, is to laugh. And never mind if it comes down to a “politeness of despair,” as a famous definition of humor goes. Let’s acquaint ourselves with this lightness on the sides of some comedy legends.
Finally, for those who have not yet laughed with Balzac – indeed, it is possible – the Book Club reminds us that the author of “La Comédie Humaine” was also a great humorist, creating some of the most comical scenes in 19th-century literature. If you prefer vaudeville to one-man shows, Feydeau awaits you in our archives with “Le Système Ribadier,” created in 1892 and interpreted by the actors of the Comédie-Française, remaining one of his most perfect comic machines.
On stage, under the spotlights, or in the archives, humor on the radio has a long history. From Jean Yanne to the Papous, funny broadcasts left valuable and often hilarious auditory traces.
So, think differently and live better. Shifting your ideas also means, sometimes, giving yourself new ones. Some remedies for misconceptions first: no, humans did not descend from apes; this statement betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution, as genetics professor Evelyne Heyer explains. Biologically, fathers are just as equipped as mothers to care for newborns. Social constructions, and not nature, created parental asymmetry, as anthropologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy decrypts.
The positive news also exists: The bearded vulture is back in the French Alps, after disappearing a century ago and successfully reintroduced after decades of efforts; Atlantic salmon have returned to several British rivers; and medicine now progresses in utero, opening unheard-of therapeutic prospects. It is not forbidden to start this spring with the feeling that the world is, sometimes, heading in the right direction.
